


Post Mortem

by ButterflyGhost



Category: due South
Genre: Attempted Rape, Drama, F/M, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, ghost - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-20
Updated: 2012-09-20
Packaged: 2017-11-14 16:13:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 52,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/517186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ButterflyGhost/pseuds/ButterflyGhost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Whoever told you death was real?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Glory Paid to Ashes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tatau](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tatau/gifts), [Ride_Forever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ride_Forever/gifts).



> This is dedicated to Tatau, for beta reading above and beyond the call of duty, and to Ride for reading the first chapter when there so much else going on, and persuading me that it was worth continuing to write it, even if it was the angstiest opening ever.

_"There's a land where the mountains are nameless, and the rivers all run God knows where; there are lives that are erring and aimless, and deaths that just hang by a hair; there are hardships that nobody reckons; there are valleys unpeopled and still; there's a land -- oh, it beckons and beckons, and I want to go back -- and I will." -Robert W Service, THE SPELL OF THE YUKON_

 

“So... was he... were you happy?”

 

“Well, it was complicated. But... yeah.” Kowalski is standing outside the chapel, hugging himself with one arm, leaning against the wall and sucking on a cigarette like he hasn't had a drag for years. Which Vecchio figures, was probably true, up until a week ago.

 

“What do you mean, complicated?”

 

“Everything with Fraser was complicated, you know that.”

 

Ray sighs, and clumsily pats Kowalski's arm. It's weird to think that they were once... well, not quite enemies, not quite rivals. He doesn't know what they were. And here they are now, not quite friends. But still... they're something to each other. And that is fine, because you don't have to like everyone in your family, you can even hate each other sometimes, but behind all the squabble and clatter family is family, all the same.

 

There is nothing like a funeral for bringing estranged family members back together.

 

It hits him again, like a punch to the chest, and he turns, unconsciously mirroring Kowalski's stance as he leans back against the wall. “Oh Jesus,” he says, feeling sick. He closes his eyes, leans his head back against the brick, face tipped blindly to the sky. It hurts his bare scalp, the rough brick, and he pushes his head back, as though the discomfort will make the greater pain go away. “Jesus Christ, I can't believe it.” Kowalski doesn't say anything. King of the long silences, the laconic put down. He has faced this whole thing with silence, and Ray feels inadequate, foolish, because it seems like he hasn't stopped talking in days.

 

After a moment he opens his eyes, and pushes himself away from the wall. “We should go in.”

 

“Yeah. In a minute.”

 

“This has to be hard on you.”

 

Kowalski drops the cigarette, grinds it into the gravel. “Dirty habit, he'd have hated it.”

 

“You okay?”

 

“I'll get through.”

 

Ray doesn't know what to say. It's all so dreary, banal. It feels as though... as though he should be doing something. Helping Kowalski, maybe. As though by helping him he would be helping Fraser somehow. But he can't think what to do, what would be any use? Just shut up, he thinks, shut up, and leave the man to grieve.

 

He can't shut up though. His voice has been mindlessly chattering in his head now, ever since he heard, and now that he's here, it's even worse. And there is nobody, nobody else at all, who knows... who knew... Christ, past tense... nobody else who knew Fraser like he did, like Kowalski did... It suddenly hits him. He isn't out here trying to reach out to Kowalski, trying to help the man. He's out here because he doesn't want to be alone with this, he can't... he can't...

 

Oh Jesus, he laughs as his face goes wet. Now he's crying... stupid bastard. Crying for God's sake, what must Kowalski think? Abruptly he brings his hand to his face, striking the tears off roughly, hoping nobody's noticed, but aware it's too late. And then he sees the raw pain behind Kowalski's eyes, and that makes everything worse.

 

“Hey, Vecchio... it will be... it will be...” the man's voice dries up. Neither of them can complete the thought that it will be okay, because they know damned well it won't be. Kowalski was never good with words, and Ray has just run out of them. He grunts, starts to walk away... away from Kowalski, away from the chapel, away from the funeral that is about to start inside.

 

Kowalski grabs him by the arm, yanks him back. Old jealousy rises for a moment, and he turns with his fist clenched, and his sister's voice in his ears ('what, did they give you testosterone shots in the mob?') but Kowalski doesn't have his fighting face on. Instead he pulls him into a hug. Ray freezes for a moment, then drops his head on the other man's shoulders. After a moment he realises that Kowalski is hanging onto him for dear life. Cigarette, and sweat, and last night's whiskey, everything you needed to know about the guy's pain in the way he smells. Ray smells of soap, and deodorant, and aftershave, and dry cleaning. Kowalski looks like he's slept in his clothes for a week, denim, and leather, and despair.

 

After a while Frannie comes out to call them in for the service, and finds them crying in each other's arms.

...  
...

 

Willie Lambert's hands are sweating and shaking. He rubs the palms hard against his trouser legs, then sits on his fingers to stop himself from fidgeting. This is... well, it's the strangest day. Fraser has been his friend for... it feels like forever. Although he was eleven when Fraser appeared in his life, it's as though he's known him longer, as though, somehow, he was always there, just waiting to sweep in and rescue him. Because, really, that was what had happened. Willie had been one lost kid in a thousand, running from one disaster to the next, when Fraser leapt into his life. With one decision... to trust him, to treat him with respect, Fraser had changed everything. It was as though by that act of trust he made Willie trustworthy, by respecting him he made him respectful, respectable. And Willie became able to trust himself, respect himself. Think of plans, have ambitions. Change his future.

 

And from that point on, Fraser was always there for him. After he'd moved away, he'd kept in touch, which at first surprised Willie. He had become so used to men abandoning him, his family. Whatever father of the month his poor mother was hooked up with, they always left. He should have known Fraser was never that kind of man, but really, it took him a long while before he knew for sure. When Fraser was back in Chicago he always made a point of visiting, and every month or so there were rambling, strangely erudite letters, which usually told him more than he needed to know about the latest baby to born in the neighbourhood, subzero survival techniques, or the etymological significance of some Latin or Inuit phrase, as well as the details of his police work, and Kowalski's valiant, but largely doomed attempts to teach him mechanics. They were friendly letters, very Fraser, and they always made him laugh. Reassuring. Fraser was plugged into a community. Happy. And, of course, there had been an open invitation for Willie to visit him and Kowalski in Canada. Willie had always meant to take them up on it... just he'd been so busy. Too busy.

 

Damn, it hurts. He knows now he should have made the time. Willie closes his eyes, and thinks of the last time he saw Fraser. It had been a surprise. It was the day Willie graduated from the Academy. Nobody from Willie's family turned up, for obvious reasons, though the Vecchios did, Angelica in particular radiant with pride. That in itself had lifted his heart, that he wasn't there alone, that 'his girl' had turned up. But it was when he raised his eyes from podium, accepting his scroll, and saw Fraser, smiling in full dress uniform, that he suddenly felt... what? Totally accepted, part of a family, finally.

 

Loved. He can say that, can't he? He'd loved Fraser. Fraser had loved him. It was a cliché but... yeah, he'd been the father he'd never had.

 

The most horrible thing about clichés, he thinks, is that they're true.

 

Frannie had come in with the two Rays, and the three of them are perched uncomfortably on the pew next to him, like birds on a telephone wire. Willie shuts his eyes against the mismatched little group. It's too damned weird that they're all together like this. It just can't be real. They look wrong, all of them. The whole thing does. He is in his formal uniform, and as for Frannie and her brother, yeah, you would peg them for being at a funeral from their clothes. They're dressed for it. Kowalski though... Kowalski looks like he doesn't quite know where he is, or who any of these people are. Like he's a ghost haunting his own funeral, and not the survivor.

 

If he has actually survived it, of course. Time will tell.

 

Willie is itching to hug the man, but he knows too well what it's like to be overwhelmed, to just close down. He'd made the mistake of saying, “I'm sorry,” to Kowalski, and the man gazed at him, all blear eye and stubble, and intoned blankly... “why? You didn't kill him.”

 

Yeah, Willie should have known better than to say anything.

 

The RCMP have turned out in full force. The whole place is awash with red. Willie gives the guy up front, the one talking, a dirty look. He wants to say, “you hypocritical shits, you never really liked him when he was here, and now that he's dead you're all admitting he's a hero? Fuck you, you should have said something when he was alive.” It's much easier these days to curse in his head than it is out loud. He supposes he picked that up from Fraser. He'd heard him swear once, in his life, and he'd never forget it. It had been as shocking as a slap, though he hadn't been the recipient of the curse. In fact, Fraser had been defending him. Always.

 

An inappropriate urge to laugh washes over him abruptly, as he wonders whether the red suit talking on the mike is only there to check that Fraser's really dead. Wouldn't it... wouldn't it be just like Fraser to get out of it somehow? To suddenly sit up and explain it was all some elaborate ruse to get the bad guy. Apologise profusely for upsetting them all, and go get his man?

 

There it goes again, a flash of white from the corner of his eye.

 

Dief, in his memory. He's been catching glimpses of him all week. But Dief has been gone for years and years now. He's even deader than Fraser.

 

No, Fraser wouldn't have liked that... “you can't be deader than dead, Willie,” he would have said with that slightly self mocking precision which, over the years, Willie had come to accept as part of a prank the man was playing on himself. He only started to get the humour of it as he grew out of his teens, and began to affect the pose himself. It started as a joke to freak out white guys at the Academy... they seemed so surprised when a black kid from Willie's neighbourhood went Spock on them. So far the Vecchios got it, particularly Angelica, but it was an in-joke, a family thing. They weren't sharing it with the world. Yeah, yet another thing he'd learned from Fraser. How to be deadly serious, and completely tongue in cheek.

 

Oh God... Willie leans forward, curls right over himself, and puts his head on his knees. Oh God... Fraser really is dead... Dead and with Dief. Dead, and deaf, and dumb, and done.

 

He pulls his hands out from under his thighs, and puts them over the back of his head, locks his fingers together. Braces himself. It passes, like the urge to vomit, the risk of laughter and crying receding as quickly as they came. Fraser was always so brave about things, so contained. He'd never have cried at a thing like this.

 

Willie returns to an upright position, back straight, and schools his face, wishing he could be more like Fraser.

 

The red suit has stopped, and some other stranger has taken the mike. Turnbull is meant to say something, but he waves mutely when his turn comes, and returns to sit with Frannie and the Rays. They all shift to accommodate him, Vecchio making room for the Mountie to sit in-between him and Francesca. Frannie gazes fondly at her husband, and lets her head fall onto his shoulder. Turnbull's hand drifts onto her hair, and Vecchio squooshes back down into the pew, nudging against Kowalski, who bumps up against Willie. Willie gives way, shifting in his seat, trying to ignore the speakers, and to hide his distaste for the whole proceeding. Looking away from the front, at all costs. Away from the...

 

He catches a glimpse of Maggie McKenzie, Fraser's sister, on the other side of the aisle. She glances at him, and smiles, sympathetically. She wears her tears with grace, unconscious of them perhaps. Her hand rests on her pregnant belly. Fraser will never now be an uncle. Willie thinks of his own sister, and swallows a lump in his throat.

 

He shouldn't have come. He came thinking it would do honour to Fraser, that it was the right thing to do. But all that he's achieved so far is upsetting Kowalski, upsetting himself. He just wishes he knew what to say to the guy. It's like, with Fraser gone, nobody knows Kowalski any more... including the man himself. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that Willie can think of that will help.

 

And his hands are still shaking.

 

Gradually he hears it, a noise, building in intensity. From low to high, from barely there to piercing keening howl. For an idiotic second he fears that it's his own voice, that he's cracking up... but that noise was never human. He looks around the mourners... they are all gazing ahead, or looking at their laps. Dabbing their faces with handkerchiefs. Nobody else seems to have noticed the howling, although it's making the hairs stand on the nape of his neck.

 

With a slow creeping dread he turns his eyes to the front of the church, to the latest eulogist, to the open coffin behind the speaker.

 

Standing on his back legs, front paws balanced on the coffin, is Diefenbaker. Eyes shut, head back, giving voice to a full throated, wolfish wail. The noise is loud enough now that it is filling Willie's head, echoing blindly off the inside of his skull. Diefenbaker howling for his dead.

 

What the hell? Willie brings a shaking hand up to his face. What had he been thinking, coming here? It's too much for him, obviously. Dief is dead. Fraser is dead... And this, whatever this is, it has to end, some time.

 

Dief wails on. Willie shuts his eyes.

 

He can't shut his ears.

 

Oh crap.

… ...

 

Vecchio has his arm around him, and Ray finds that he doesn't actually mind its weight on his shoulder. “Come on,” the other man says quietly, and leads him in after Frannie. “We'll get this over with.”

 

God, Ray thinks, get it over with. Like I'm having a tooth pulled.

 

And why is it such a shock to him, he wonders, why is this such a surprise? They were always going to die. He'd kinda hoped it would be him first, if they couldn't go both together. He was selfish that way. He'd never wanted to live in the world alone. But this day was always coming. He should have known it. It could have come now, it could have come in ten years time, but it was still coming.

 

And now it's here, and this black day is swallowing him up.

 

At the front the minister, priest guy, whatever, is droning on, and then there's a bunch of suits speechifying... and yeah, they asked him to “say a few words,” but fuck it, this isn't a performance. It's not theatre, for fuck's sake, no matter what the RCMP are doing to it. He doesn't mind Vecchio speaking, or Maggie. Vecchio's almost as much family as Ben's sister, after all, but the rest of them... arrogant shits, the lot of them. He tips his head back, looks up at the ceiling. His strings have all been cut. He's not a real boy any more.

 

He drifts. He drifts.  
…

 

Ray hears the shot, sees it even. Lightning, stabbing the dark. And without thought he is moving, even before the night swallows the flash, even before Ben hits the ground.

 

Bang. Thud. Such little sounds to change the world.

 

And he's hunkering over him, practically face to face, hand fumbling under Ben's shirt, to feel the wound.

 

Too much, too much, too much blood. He's caught in the arterial surge, the pulse and spray of it. It can't be like this. It can't be.

 

Ben's trying to speak. Ray puts his ear up to his face.

 

“To have...”

 

“What? Ben, I can't hear, what? Who did this?”

 

“To have...”

 

Jesus, please, Ben, he's thinking, for God's sake, tell me. Who did this? What are you trying to say?

 

“... and to hold.” Ben's eyes roll back, and he starts to tremble, his breath coming shorter, and swifter then... it stops. He just stops. Ben's adam's apple clicks, and he just stops.

 

Ray puts his mouth over Ben's just the way he's been taught, starts to breathe for him, counts inhalation, exhalation. I owe you buddy, I owe you air, with interest. Come on, come on, breathe. His hand is on Ben's neck now, and he can't feel a pulse, the spray has stopped, so he sits back, pounds the chest, leans forward, kisses (buddy breathing), pushes in air.

 

It'll be all right. It's always all right. It's just more crazy shit, more crazy Ben and Ray bullshit, just another stupid adventure.

 

He'll be all right.

 

And even when he feels that 'something', that moment when the body becomes just a body, a pod with no pea, a sack of meat, even then he keeps on breathing, and pounding, and trying to pull him back to life. Even when the cops drag him away... even then he won't believe it.

 

No way. No way Ben would leave him.

 

No way.

 

To have and to hold.  
… ...

 

The service finishes, and Frannie looks across her brother to the other Ray, who she can never think of as Stan, or Kowalski. The man who gave himself up for two years, to work undercover, and help preserve her brother's life. She looks at Ray, and all her mothering instincts spring up inside. The man is sprawled groggily, like he was just dropped from above, staring up at nothing, loose limbed and unjointed, and definitely not there. She signals her brother with her eyes. He nods, and gently puts his hand on Ray's shoulder. “Hey, buddy, time to go.” Ray, the not Stan, blinks, as though he's coming out of a dark tunnel, and looks round the chapel like he's never seen it before. Willie is leaning across to him, and he and her brother hook Ray under the arms, and help him get to his feet. Willie looks tight-faced and distracted, but he's there. “Come on,” the young man says kindly as they steer Ray back out. “Time to go.”

… ...

 

The whole world strobes and flickers, and the binding light is blinding light, is cold, too bright, and draws me up, draws me away, past hearing, past touch, past sight...

 

I don't want it. Not now. I don't want to go away. The light pulls me, and I struggle, panic, start to thrash. I'm a fish on a hook, and I don't want to go. I pull back and... I pull back and...

 

I'm falling, flailing, floundering, back down, and away.

 

Bright and dark and day and light and night and...

 

The world is crowding around me, beating like a heart, clenching like a fist and I'm in time again.

 

Time again. I'm in time.

 

I'm in time again, and my two Rays are crying. My good friend, and my beloved. They're holding each other, crying like somebody died. And I know why. There's been a mistake... but it's not too late to fix it. Because I've come back. They don't have to cry like that.

 

I try to speak, but for some reason the air won't push the words past my tongue. I try again, and something, an approximate whisper, not quite speech, issues forth. “Don't... don't cry. I'm not dead.” But again, for some reason, they don't hear.

 

They turn, with Frannie, and walk into an ugly red rectangle of a building... a chapel? But when I try to follow them the world snaps shut again, and there is only space, and terrible peace, and silence.  
… ...

 

Ma didn't come. It would have hurt too much. Besides, she's getting old now to travel, said she'd sooner stay in Chicago and babysit. Which is fine, as it happens. But still... if she had wanted to come they would have worked something out. In a family the size of the Vecchios' there is always a babysitter. Used to be that Ma would run off to Florida or Italy at the drop of a hat. Nowadays she wants to stay close to home. Who could blame her? Frannie doesn't blame her. If she doesn't come to the funeral she can pretend, somehow, that Benton is fine... just busy, out there in the Northern Wilds, out of reach of the phones, perhaps, but other than that, just fine.

 

Just fine...

 

She puts her arms around Rennie, and gives him a hug. He's bearing up okay, under the circumstances. Over the years he has grown more stable, calmer. Fatherhood suits his silly side. He's good at having children climb all over him. Still too tender-hearted though. Spoils the kids, spoils her.

 

He was about cried out though, even before they arrived here. So was she.

 

Maggie and Ray... her Ray, had both stood up front and talked about Benton. Ray... Canada Ray as the children call him, is slumped down in his seat, hands covering his face. In the end everyone is done, the speeches are over, and this part is nearly over apart from the...

 

Crap, it's that time already. Okay, let's do it then...

 

They walk together up to the open casket, Rennie with his arm wrapped around her in a band of supportive warmth. They look briefly down into the casket, flinch, and walk away. Rennie, God love him, starts crying again.

 

Oh Lord, Fraser... Benton, he looks so... empty. The smile that the undertaker had fitted to his cheeks looks wrong. And what the hell is he supposed to be smiling about anyway?

 

Young Willie is standing at a distance from the casket, very vulnerable in his dress suit. Despite his height he looks, to her maternal eye, like a kid playing at being a cop. His long fingered hands are clenching and unclenching by his sides, and her heart goes out to him. She knows that he's a man now, twenty three years old... God, already... but at times he just reminds her so much of her children. She stands on tiptoe and kisses Rennie. “I'll not be long, honey,” she promises, patting his cheek. He smiles at her, as he always does, no matter what, and she turns her attention to the young man.

 

“Willie,” she says, and goes to hug him. He stands stiff in her embrace, reminding her of Benton for a minute, before he relaxes fractionally, and hugs her back. He's staring at the coffin as though he expects it to jump up and bite him. “Come on, let's step outside for a minute. Get you some air.” He follows her mutely, and she breathes a sigh of relief that there is someone here for her to mother. Kowalski is unresponsive, and treating her like she's invisible, which makes sense of course. Willie responds to her, however, with the deference of his childhood. He'd grown up with her as a sort of auntie after all. So she's some use. God, she thinks, looking up at him, squinting a little in the sharp sunlight, he's grown so much. He's an inch taller than Rennie now. When did he get so... big? He used to be such a brat. She smiles fondly, and squeezes his arm. “How you doing?”

 

“I'm... I'm sorry, I'm okay. Just...”

 

“You didn't expect to see him like that?”

 

It's nearly imperceptible, but Willie shakes his head. He gives her a weird look and opens his mouth, as though he's measuring her up, or trying to make up his mind up to say something. Whatever it is, he obviously decides to keep it to himself. “I'm all right, thanks Frannie. I'm sorry I made you leave...”

 

“No, no... it's okay. It's too hot and stuffy in there. Besides, there's still hours of this to go.” She sighs. “They're gonna line the streets with Mounties, and have you seen how many people are turning up? That in there now, that's the 'little' service for friends and family... the big one, the one to show Canada how they respect their fallen, that's going to last a while.”

 

“That was the family service...” Willie laughs, a little breath. “Wow... so who were all those red guys prattling on? I didn't recognise anyone except Maggie and Frobisher.”

 

Frannie sours. “Idiots, for the most part.”

 

“And... why the religious stuff? I didn't think Fraser was that religious.”

 

“Well, as I understand it, the RCMP organised the whole thing, and it was on his record, way back from when he signed up to the academy as a nineteen year old, that he was Christian. You're right though, he wasn't that religious. I think it was more his Grandmother really. I think she was a missionary.”

 

“I thought she was a librarian.”

 

“They were that too... But it was only missionaries, in those days, who bothered going to China.”

 

“Couldn't somebody have said something to... I don't know, make it more personal?”

 

“Everyone was in shock. Besides, they are giving him a good send off.”

 

“Yeah... yeah. They are.” Willie looks more steady now. She smiles up at him.

 

“Shall we go back in?”

 

“Yeah...” The kid's fiddling with his hat, his mannerisms reminding her, for the second time in less than ten minutes, of Benton. Irrelevantly she finds herself thinking, again, about what ugly hats cops have to wear in America... what ugly uniforms compared with the RCMP... Bad enough to be grieving, but to be grieving in that uniform while surrounded by all those handsome, well-groomed Mounties... well, it was just adding insult to injury.

 

Oh, shut up Francesca, she chides at herself. You should have grown out of that teenage crap. Today of all days. Today, you're Ma Turnbull.

 

She slides her arm through Willie's, and gently leads him back inside.  
… ...

 

Is this the start of it, Willie wonders, as he stands by the grave, trying to ignore Dief, the start of whatever it was that got his mother in the end? She had been relatively normal when he was a little kid. Well, not normal, not like a normal Mom... but she'd been like a normal kid. Before she'd cracked up, or caved in, or collapsed, or whatever the hell it was... before they took her away that first time. That long time. Her departures never seemed so long after that. Even the last one, where the doctors said she would likely never come back. But there had been a time when she was younger, when she had seemed relatively normal... maybe that was just a front she had been putting on. Maybe she'd been seeing dead dogs too... just knew to keep it to herself.

 

Great. Now he has Michael Jackson singing in his head, that song he hated so much as a child. The weather gives the lyrics the lie. There is sunshine when she's gone. There is sunshine when he's gone too, when Fraser is put in the ground. The sun shines whether you want it to or not. It's got no damn consideration for grief.

 

He squints away from the light. It shouldn't be sunny at a funeral. What was it his grandmother said? Happy the bride the sun shines on, happy the corpse the rain rains on. Yeah, right. Happy corpse... no wonder his Mom went off the rails with her for a mother. Happy corpse indeed...

 

At last the funeral is running to its end... nearly over.

 

He closes his eyes against the salute of guns, against the Canadian flag being furled back from the casket, from the casket itself, sinking gradually into the earth. He wishes Angelica could be here. Just for her nearness. He wouldn't even have to hold her hand, just stand by her, know that she cared. That she cared without having to understand. That she was there.

 

He shouldn't have come here by himself. Yeah, Frannie and Ray are there, but they aren't the Vecchio he needs. He wants... needs... he needs Angelica. And she's a long way away.

 

By the time he makes his way to the lip of the grave the hole is practically filled up, so many people have come to throw earth in it. He wonders, not for the first time today, if Fraser ever realised how many people he had touched. How many lives he had not just changed, but saved.

 

His own life for one. In some other reality he is in prison, on the street, sickening or dead.

 

He scoops soil up in his hand, holds it over the grave, and lets the earth trickle through his fingers. This is unreal. At his grandmother's funeral there were twelve mourners. His mother had considered it quite a turn out. Fraser's funeral stopped the traffic.

 

As he walks from the grave Diefenbaker finally stops howling. The half wolf turns with him and trots briskly at his heel, sticking close to him. Dief's been sticking close to Willie ever since he walked away from the open casket, with Frannie at his side. He followed at his side as they walked behind the coffin, he lay flat at his feet and howled as he stood in the crowd of mourner's gathered round the grave, and now, no matter how hard Willie tries, no matter how hard he tries to ignores the fact, he can't shut it out, he can't make it not so.

 

There's a ghost mutt standing next to him, pushing up affectionately, and frostily, to his leg.

 

Willie shakes his head at himself. Dief had been so much part of his life... in fact, you could even say the only reason Willie was a cop these days was because of Dief. He'd never have stuck with school for those critical first years without Fraser's encouragement, and the promise of walking Dief every day.

 

So, here he is, in a graveyard, haunted by a dead dog. Dead wolf. Whatever. To quote Kowalski... greatness.

 

He pushes past would be sympathisers, not trying to be rude, but just to get away, and keeps walking, as far from the flock of mourners as he can get, finally settling on one of the commemorative benches. The wording on the little brass plate reads: 'Rhonda Matthews, beloved wife, mother, grandmother. We'll miss you forever.' He looks at Rhonda's grave, opposite, dilapidated. The stones are intended as permanent memorials, but even the imagined permanency of grief fades in the end. Rhonda's husband grew frail and followed her. See? There are his dates too. And their children and grandchildren move on with their lives, and there are no flowers any more, nobody to sit on this rain warped bench any more, nobody to weed the grave. There's nothing wrong with that. It's natural, it's normal. The best way to honour the dead is to keep on living. What's a tombstone after all? It's not like anyone lives there. Whoever the dead are, they're gone.

 

Diefenbaker settles alongside him, his presence a casual contradiction to his thoughts, and pants, tongue lolling over his teeth. The last time Willie saw him, Dief was blear-eyed and old. He looks good now, back in his prime. The half wolf presses his cold side up against the man's leg, heavy bodied, and so damned real that it is all Willie can do to avoid patting him.

 

He wonders what they will put on Fraser's tombstone. Probably more stuff about what a hero he was. He remembers something, something Fraser had taught him, back when the man decided, for no obvious reason, to teach him a bit of Latin. Well... there had been a reason. Willie had a hopeless crush on Angie, even at the age of twelve, and resolved to learn Italian, the more effectively to romance her. Fraser laboured under the impression that Latin grammar would help him speak Italian. That and opera. Willie smiles, briefly, at the memory, then scratches his forehead, trying to remember the quote. No... it's gone. Damn. It's in there somewhere... he finds the phrase in English instead. He looks at Dief, raises an eyebrow and says bitterly, “Glory paid to ashes comes too late.”

 

“Cinera gloria sera est.”

 

Silence. Silence and cold. A yawning maw of a silence, breathing out winter into this strange summer day. The presence sits as a chill beside him on the bench. Willie doesn't move. By his feet Dief lifts his head, yips cheerfully in recognition. The dead wolf's tail beats up and down, as though this is normal, as though...

 

Without moving his body Willie allows his eyes to shift, so that he can catch a glimpse of whatever it is that sits beside him. And shifting his eyes his head follows, and his shoulders, and before he can stop himself he has turned and is facing...

 

Oh God.

 

Fraser is pale, tired looking. Dressed in his civvies, leather jacket, cable knit jumper, jeans.

 

And blood.

 

Who would have thought the poor man had so much blood in him?

 

“Hello, Willie,” he says.  
… ...

 

“Come on, Kowalski, come with us, you don't want to be alone tonight.”

 

Kowalski grins, mirthlessly, and Ray grits his teeth. Dammit, they're gonna help this guy, if it kills them. “Look, the hotel won't care if someone comes along and crashes on my couch. Frannie and Turnbull are in the room next door, and Willie's down the hall, so you won't be lonely.”

 

“You call your brother-in-law Turnbull?”

 

“Wouldn't you? It's better than Renfield.” Ray is trying for a laugh, but barely raises a smile. Hey... better than nothing. They start walking together across the grass. “So come on. Back to the hotel with us.” Maybe the guy can take the opportunity to have a decent shower or a bath. More than likely they'll both get drunk. Well, at least with the funeral out of the way Kowalski is talking again, even if he does still seem to be a long way away.

 

Kowalski pauses, for a moment, squinting, then pulls on his glasses. Ray follows his gaze.

 

“Is that... is that Willie?”

 

“Yeah...” Something looks damned creepy.

 

“Something's queer,” Kowalski says, “kid's talking to himself.”

 

“He's probably on his cell phone.”

 

“Yeah... perhaps.”

 

Ray is pretty sure that's not it, but he keeps the thought to himself. Willie has grown into a great young man, but funny thing is, although they are (were) so different, the kid often reminds him of Benny. Not as buttoned down and proper... but then neither was Benny, not when you really knew him. Watching Willie now, talking earnestly at nothing, Ray feels his flesh crawl, remembering his old man, remembering Benny talking to the air.

 

Yeah, Kowalski is right. Something's queer.  
… ...

 

“Jesus Christ,” Willie nearly shoots sideways off the bench. He's sweating with fright and cold.

 

“No, Benton Fraser.”

 

“I mean... you're dead.”

 

A pained expression flits across Fraser's face. “Unfortunately. The evidence does seem to point that direction. I'm sorry.”

 

Willie says nothing, and feels his tongue turn dry, cleaving to the roof of his mouth.

 

“I really am sorry, Willie. I didn't mean to frighten you.”

 

“That's... that's all right.” His voice comes out as a whisper. He's crazy. That's it. He's gone stark staring crazy. His grandmother always said that, 'if you read too much you'll go mad, you can't fit all that stuff into your head without something coming loose.' Who'd have thought she was right? He laughs, a cracked little bark of a noise, and hears himself prattle nonsensically to his hallucination, as though it makes any difference. “I mean, if you were going to come, it would be today, wouldn't it?”

 

“It seems strangely appropriate.” Fraser looks forlorn. “I didn't plan it this way, though it seems fitting somehow. It's a graveyard. It would appear to be my funeral. But,” he squints at the sky, “the sun is shining...”

 

“Yeah but why... I mean, why aren't you in heaven or wherever you're meant to go?”

 

“Ah... well, that's an interesting problem as it happens.” Fraser rubs his thumb along his eyebrow thoughtfully. “I don't entirely know.”

 

Shit, thinks Willie, focussing on his face, not his blood stained jumper. Shit, he looks so tired. “You don't know? You're haunting me, and you don't know why?”

 

“I didn't intend to haunt you. You just seemed... you seemed the most receptive person here.”

 

“You mean, I'm the craziest.”

 

“No... I don't mean that. I mean, I don't think you're crazy... not that I'm necessarily the best person to ask. I have been called crazy myself, after all. No... to be honest, I wanted to talk to Ray...”

 

“Which Ray? Vecchio or Kowalski?”

 

“Actually, either Ray, both Rays. But... 'Kowalski' as you call him,” Fraser pulls a little face as he says it, “he's taking it so hard.”

 

“Yeah, he's really hurting.”

 

“I know.” Fraser looks away for a moment, eyes glittering with grief. “I just wanted to tell him I'm okay.”

 

“Are you okay?”

 

“Again, that's an interesting question.” He smiles gently. “It depends on your criteria. I feel good. My back doesn't hurt any more. But it's odd...”

 

“What is?”

 

“Being dead, Son. It's very odd.”

 

Willie's heart flips, as it always did on those infrequent occasions when Fraser called him 'son.' He looks at the ground. Maybe he should call the doctor when he gets home. He'll have to be very careful what he says, especially given his family history. Perhaps he can just say he got stressed after the death of his... not father, but... what can he call Fraser? Friend seems inadequate now that he really thinks of it, father is inaccurate... what then, mentor? He laughs into his hand, light headed. This is crap. Mentor? He's not a Jedi knight for fuck's sake. He's just... cracking up a little. Just needs a little help. Yeah, he should talk to Angelica... only, he doesn't want to worry her. Hell, be honest, he doesn't want to scare her off. Who then? He should see the doctor. If his mother had seen the doctor sooner, maybe she'd have got help in time. Maybe she'd be okay.

 

Fuck's sake, don't panic, he tells himself, you're not your mother. Maybe it's sleep deprivation, that's all. A good night's sleep will sort it out. Won't it?

The ghost carries on talking.

 

“Maybe that's why I'm still here,” he says, “to let people know that there's nothing to worry about, that I'm okay.”

 

“You're not okay,” Willie points out the brutally obvious. “You're dead.”

 

“I know that now.” Fraser doesn't sound in the least bit bothered or offended. “But could you pass on the message that I'm all right?”

 

“Why would they listen to me?”

 

There is no reply, and Willie looks up from gazing at his shoes. Fraser has disappeared.

 

Fantastic, Willie thought, and rubbed his face. Fanfuckingtastic. I've cracked.

 

Away in the distance he can see Kowalski and Vecchio walking together, in what seems to be the direction of the hotel. He gets to his feet and starts to follow them. Sooner he gets back with regular, people, alive people, the sooner he'll feel back to normal.

 

There is a cold nudge at his thigh, and he looks down to see Dief grinning hopefully up at him.

 

Yeah, right. Normal.  
… ...

 

Willie is sitting on the floor, with his gangly legs crossed at the ankles. He looks a bit like a daddy long legs, all elbows and long limbs. More than that, he looks spaced out. Which is odd, because he hasn't been drinking. He keeps glancing to his right hand side, across and down, furtively, as though he can see something there, then looking away again. “You know,” Willie finally says, “the first time he ever spoke to me, he called me 'Son.'” Ray smiles, tightly. His face isn't used to it any more. Strange how quickly a man can lose the art of smiling.

 

Vecchio makes a humph noise, and adds, “yeah, the first time I ever spoke to you, I was a jerk.”

 

“You're still a jerk,” Ray says, just for the sake of it, and takes a pull on his beer.

 

“No, I mean I was really really shitty. I was a real cynic in those days.”

 

“And you're not now?”

 

“Not so much, no. Benny kind of rubs off on you.”

 

“Yeah,” Ray stares off into space. “Yeah.” There's a big black lump in his throat. No, he can't talk about it yet. Can't talk about him. He swallows, and washes the lump down with more beer. “You know this stuff isn't working,” he says, changing the subject. “You got any decent liquor here?”

 

“Yeah,” Vecchio gets to his feet. “Let's break out the hard stuff.”

 

“None for me,” the kid says.

 

Vecchio laughs, puts his hand on Willie's shoulder, and kisses him on the crown of his head, like an uncle. Which, Ray supposes, he is. Come to that, if Ben had been Willie's Dad by proxy that made him kind of an uncle too. Uncle Knuckles, Willie called him, when he taught him how to box. That might be why he was still thinking of Willie as a kid, even when he was a grown man, in his twenties. Willie's actually taller than him now, must be what, six foot three, six foot four? No matter how tall he is, he'll still be a kid when he's fifty, in Ray's eyes at least. He'd always liked the lad. Grin, and swagger, and a smidgen of flash. Vecchio's talking, giving the kid an amused look. “Don't worry,” he smirks, “I remember what happened the last time you had a drink.”

 

“What happened the last time?”

 

Willie gives both men a glare, and shakes his head. Vecchio seems to get the hint, because he shuts up.

 

“Do you think...” Willie's still looking to his right hand side, “do either of you believe in...” He runs dry, and shrugs. “It doesn't matter.”

 

Hell it doesn't matter, Ray thinks. The lad was either going to ask if they believed in the afterlife, or ghosts, or God or something. Sure it matters. But they aren't questions Ray can answer, because he has no fucking idea. He's thought about them before, of course he has... everyone does. But they were never so damned important before. And here he is now, with no hope, or explanation, drinking someone else's whiskey, and trying to pack it all down, keep it all in, trying not to break.

 

That's something though, something he owes Vecchio, one good thing. The guy let him cry.

 

Christ. He shuts his eyes, and lets his head fall back on the sofa. It suddenly strikes him that crying isn't going to be any help, that after the funeral he has all of forever stretching out ahead of him, alone.

 

Willie and Vecchio are talking now, and he lets their voices drift into the background. Thank God they have the decency to leave him alone. If he thinks about Ben, if he holds him in his memory, then he’s not really dead, is he?

 

He counts his breath, and visualises his Ben. He digs deep, to conjure a good memory... the two of them out on the ice, not another soul for hundreds of miles, learning to drink in silence. Learning to lean on each other's presence with patience past words. For a moment he catches a glimpse of Ben, smiling at him, wind chapped and rosy in his furs, his breath frosted into ice on his young beard. His heart lurches with the brightness of that moment. But within a second it is swallowed up by the last moment. Death like a mouth, eating up everything that came before.

 

It always comes back to this. Kneeling over him, mouth to mouth, forcing in breath, too late. And pushing, pushing with all his weight, to get the heart to beat again. Pushing so hard he cracks ribs. And he's completely fucking helpless in the face of it. In the middle of that maelstrom he knows he is too late, but he can't let it go. He can't let it go, and he still doesn't believe it. Ben's not dead. He can't be dead. He can't.

 

Oh Christ, he thinks, I'm going to be crying forever. I'll never see him again. He brings his arm up over his eyes to cover his tears, to block out sight, though he knows everyone in the room will understand.

 

He wants to be alone. He never wants to be alone again.

 

Ah shit. He doesn't have a fucking clue what he wants. He just wants Ben.  
… ...

 

He should have been safe enough in his own room. He'd left the Rays as they settled into the hard stuff, and had hoped... hoped for at least a decent night's sleep. But there he is, again. Willie flinches, and turned his back.

 

“Could you...” his voice falters, “could you... clean yourself up, a little?”

 

“What, you mean... this?” Fraser looks down at his clothing, and looks surprised. “I'm sorry, I didn't notice.”

 

“You didn't notice?”

 

“I don't understand,” the older man brushes his hand across the bloody clothing, looking confused. “This isn't your last image of me, I don't understand why I'd appear this way to you.”

 

“Maybe it's someone else's last image of you,” Willie says, then closes his eyes. Fuck's sake, what's he doing, trying to work out some logic to this madness? It's the middle of the night, there's nobody here but himself. And there's no logic to this, other than the obvious. He's had a bad day, and his mind is playing tricks on him. What the fuck is he thinking? Why does he keep on talking? He should have taken that damned drink.

 

Fraser is looking at him, thumb lightly tracing the shape of his eyebrow. Such a familiar gesture. If you'd asked Willie only a few days ago what gestures he associated with Fraser he'd have said something about military stance, how, even when he was off duty he was on parade rest. That he never slouched. He'd forgotten all about the eyebrow rub. And here the man stands now. Not at all Willie's private picture of him. In Willie's mind Fraser is always as he was when they first met, in his thirties, clean and crisp. This Fraser is older, with five o'clock shadow. His hair is longer... his hair is even wavy, and who would have ever guessed that?

 

But most of all, this Fraser is wounded. It looks even worse now. When they had been sitting side by side it was easier to ignore it, but now he's standing right in front of him. There's no blood on his face, presumably somebody cleaned him up a little. But the clothes, that cable knit of his... There's so much blood it's black, and it's just not right. That's not Fraser, that's not...

 

Shit. Pull yourself together, kid. He's not there.

 

Still, he's too self conscious to get into his pyjamas with Fraser in the room, even imaginary Fraser, and damned if he's going to ask his hallucination to leave him alone. He climbs in under the sheets, and gets changed there, throwing his uniform on the floor beside the bed.

 

“You should keep your things neater,” Fraser says, disapprovingly.

 

“Not tonight. I just want to sleep.” He shouldn't be talking. Every time he acknowledges the thing it gives it more power in his mind, more reality. “Just leave me alone.” Damn, the words are out. He peeks over the top of the blankets, and sees that Fraser has gone. He lets out a sigh. Thank God.

The mattress starts to buck and shift at the bottom of the bed, and he looks down to see Dief turning in circles, before dropping with a satisfied 'wuff' into a heavy huddle of fur.

 

Oh Jesus, Willie thinks. I'm hopeless. He lets his head fall flat on his pillow, and squeezes his eyes shut. What the hell is he going to tell Angie? Utterly hopeless.  
… ...

 

Ray tips Kowalski onto the bed, and kneels, manages to get the man's boots off. He crinkles his nose. He's had a few too many, but he's not so drunk that he can't smell those socks. He's surprised the guy hasn't got trench foot. For a moment he considers peeling the socks off, but it seems a bit too intimate somehow. Instead, he throws a blanket over the comatose form, and makes his own way, woozily, back to the sofa.

 

Part of him is thinking, 'this isn't respectful to Benny. Being drunk like this, it's almost like an insult, like I'm saying, hey, I don't want the pain, I don't even want to grieve...' But then he thinks, 'Benny never judged anyone for a thing like this. And I'll still be grieving in the morning.' Actually, in the morning he'll probably be contending with Kowalski as to who can puke the most.

 

Fuck it. He tilts the whiskey bottle into a heavy glass, and half fills it with what's left of the liquor. He pulls a face at it, and takes a swallow. He's had enough to drink now that it doesn't sting, it's just warm, bringing heat to his face, and burning to his chest. His doctor wouldn't like it, if he knew he was drinking, but hell, he doesn't do it often these days, what with his grumbling ulcer, and pain meds for old wounds. A hell of a lot of old wounds. He doesn't take his pain meds every day, and hasn't had any in a week, though it damned well hurts. It just keeps slipping his mind. He can afford to get drunk, for once. He takes another belt, balances the glass on his chest, and closes his eyes.

 

He feels rather than hears it. The whiskey heat is bleeding out, and his skin is becoming cool. It marbles, then puckers into goosebumps, each teeny tiny hair springing up with the cold. Oh jeez, he thinks, recognising the feeling of a haunting. Not now, after all these years. His old man. He doesn't need this, not now. Without opening his eyes, he drains his glass, and stomps it down on the stand next to the sofa. Okay, deep breath, he thinks, you're not going to get into a shouting match. Just...

 

One, two, three...

 

He opens his eyes.

 

It's not his father.

 

“Oh, God... Benny.” For a moment his heart rises up in joy, and he's glad, so glad... then he sees the truth in Benny's eyes, even before he sees it on his blood encrusted clothes. He reaches out to touch him, to hold him somehow, but in that very instant Benny is gone, and he's left sitting by himself, hugging empty air.  
… ...

 

My father warned me, but I didn't understand. How could I? How could anyone, until they were here themselves? Borderlands. Everything so different, everything the same. Cities bleeding into each other. You turn a corner, and you're not in Chicago any more. You turn a corner, and you're not in the Yukon any more. And the further and deeper you go, the more confusing it becomes, and the more lost you get.

 

And that's just space... but time! Good Lord, time... I'm haunting my own history. I don't know where I am, when I am, even if I am, until one of them sees me.

 

At first I couldn't even whisper. I couldn't draw enough strength from them, couldn't attract their attention, before I was snapped back. First into silence, myself compressed to nearly nothing, not even a heartbeat. But I'm still here, I still feel me, I still know me... and I know him. And I'm here for him, still. And then, I tried so hard to reach my Ray, my darling, just to hold him, just to tell him it's all right, I love him. But instead of comforting him, I find myself... there. There in that terrible now, where it is never all right for him, and things will never be all right ever again.

 

I hear his thoughts in my head, feel what's boiling through him. 'Buddy, breathe, I'm paying you back with interest,' and beneath the words, and the thinking, and the action, a single heart cry. 'Don't leave, don't leave, don't leave me here...'

 

I try so hard to get through, but his pain is implacable as a wall. I can't get through.

 

Oh Ray, all I ever wanted was to hold you.

 

And then, Good Lord, a miracle. In the middle of this endless now, Dief appears. I follow him, the white flash of his tail as he darts ahead of me, leading me through the maze. So many yesterdays, tomorrows and todays. And finally I find myself sitting on a bench, on a green blue day, with the sun shining... and Willie sees me. Willie. And I could hug him, if I had been lucky enough to have had him for a son. If I had been blessed to be his father. He's the closest thing I've got. And for all his fear, he sees me. As I saw my own father, such a long time ago.

 

Now I have a foothold in the world, and I can reach out. And I steady myself, hang on to Willie's strength. And when he lets me in a second time, I realise he needs me here, whether he knows it himself or not. And I'm on a secure footing, at last. I have a place in time. It's such a relief to relax, to extend myself. To reach...  
… ...

 

“Ray, stop it,” Ben is kneeling beside him, but that can't be right, because Ray is kneeling over his body, trying to breathe life into it, as he has been for over a week now. Every night, when he snatches any sleep, this is waiting for him. Benny dying and dead, and him unable to let go.

 

But Ben is next to him, looking so gravely and so earnestly into his face, with such... such love. It's practically shining out of him. “Ray, stop it,” he says, “you can stop now. I'm fine.”

 

“You're not fine, you're dead,” Ray says, and it wasn't what he meant to say at all. He'd wanted to say nothing, just to throw himself in his arms, bury his head on his shoulder, hang on for dear life... but he can't, because this can't be right, because Ben is dead. He's dead at his feet. So who the hell is this?

 

Ben smiles, sad, and it just about plucks Ray's heart out. “You're the second person to say that today. Yes, I'm dead.” Ray chokes, and turns his face away. “No, sweetheart,” Ben continues, urgently, “please don't... don't turn away. I love you, that's all I wanted to say. I love you. I won't let you go.”

 

“This is, this is cruel,” Ray manages. “Leave me alone, just... I don't know who you are. Just leave me alone.”

 

When he turns his head it's only him in the alley, not even the body remaining, not even the sound of sirens, the promise of help coming. Just him, kneeling on cold concrete, covered in blood, while all around him the buildings dissolve, and the stars are going out.

 

Wake up. It's all gone black now. Wake up. He tries to scream himself awake. Wake up. Wake up...

 

He wakes, crushed by the dark, alone. He rolls on the bed (and how did he get here?) and grabs a pillow. Hugs it, like a child hugging his teddy, and doesn't scream, but moans.


	2. After the Funeral

Sophia made it to the airport on time, even though she enjoyed driving less and less these days, particularly in a... what did they call this thing? Family carrier? People carrier? In her day, they'd have called it a bus, and had done with it. At least she didn't have her grown up children sitting in the car with her, barking about her little old lady driving habits. Angelica, of course, was too polite to say anything. Either that or she was completely oblivious. Sophia smiled. The dear girl. She was so obviously smitten. She'd be glad to have her Willie back. Slowly and carefully Sophia eased the car into its parking space, then turned to the young ones in the back. 

“Now, behave. Remember they'll all be tired, and they're coming back from a funeral, so don't jump all over them asking for sweets and presents. They've not been on holiday, after all.” 

“We'll be good,” Myra promised, and her grandmother nodded. Myra she could trust. She was obviously the Turnbull child who had inherited her father's... well... Canadian virtues. It was the two other little monkeys who were the problem. All Italy and Chicago wrestling on the back seat. She loved her son-in-law, but he seemed to have no idea about discipline at all. Ah well, she sighed. Perhaps that was a good thing. He was the polar opposite of Francesca's first husband, who would lash out for nothing. The polar opposite of her Frank who... She let the thought slide. Perhaps there was something to be said for Renfield's relaxed approach to parenting. They were good children, after all.

Noisy, though. 

“Hey, quiet in the back,” she raised her voice. “Do you want to get out of this car? Because we can wait for them here in the car park if you prefer.” The two boys stopped wriggling. 

“Sorry Nonna,” they chanted in unison, and Sophia rolled her eyes. One thing she had learned in seventy eight years of life was that usually, when a child said “sorry,” what they actually meant was, “sorry we got in trouble,” or “sorry we were caught.” 

“I'll watch them for you,” Angelica said, quietly, in Italian. “If they misbehave I'll bring them back to the car.”

“Don't worry, if it comes to that I'll bring them back to the car. I know you've been waiting to see your sweetheart.” Sophia smiled to herself as her eldest granddaughter blushed. Then she switched back to English for the benefit of the Turnbull tribe. “Come on, out. Out... one, two, three... very good.”

Before long they were making their noisy way to the terminal. Sophia felt, not for the first time in her life, like a Momma duck, with her tribe of little ducklings trundling along behind her.

Her feet and ankles ached.

Angelica was off to one side playing with the two boys, who seemed to be making swooshing noises, and fighting with invisible swords. Raymondo had told her on various occasions that they were called lightning sabres or some such. She remembered her own brothers playing with imaginary swords and guns, remembered their dusty bare feet beneath the Italian sun. Children never changed. 

Little Myra sidled up to her, and put an arm around her. She was still small for her age, surprising when you thought how tall her father was, and her arm went round her Nonna's hip. She let her head nuzzle on where Sophia's waist had been, a long time ago. Sophia smiled, and let her hand rest gently against the little girl's curls. 

“Don't worry, love, they'll be here soon.”

Myra nodded, and sucked her thumb.

To their right came a sudden explosion of energy as the boys burst forward, like horses surging to the crack of the starter's pistol at a race track. She sighed, and shook her head. Myra looked up at her for permission to join her brothers, and Sophia smiled down. As though the dear girl needed permission. “Go,” she said, and propelled her with a little push on the shoulders. Myra followed her brothers, more timidly, and her Daddy dropped to his knees, all smiles, arms wide, as he gathered her up into a hug. Francesca was wearily defending her bag from her rummaging twins, when Raymondo snatched Mark and swung him like a satchel under his arm. And, as always, she was frightened for him, because, he'd never complain about it, but... that last injury of his. Oh, Raymondo... 

And at the memory of the last time he was shot, it hit her again. It could so easily have been her boy they'd put in the ground. 

The children and the grownups carried on behaving just as family should when meeting up at the airport, but, for the first time this thing was real. They'd just buried Benton. Her eyes stung, and the airport blurred. Then Willie was coming through the gates, dragging the luggage trolley, with one hand looped protectively around a friend's shoulder... around...

Oh. Ray Kowalski. Dear God... she knew he was coming, but she hadn't seen him in years. Did she carry the years as heavily as that poor man? Or... was that just the weight of the last nine days?

Oh God. Poor Ray... 

Angelica was stepping up ahead now, and Willie stooped his head into a kiss, then turned, and started introducing her to Ray Kowalski. Of course, Ray had met her before, but then she'd been in pigtails. The man just nodded, making social gestures as though he'd learnt them off by heart. But there was nothing in there that Sophia could see. He'd always been such a... such a fizzy boy. And here he was, flat as tap water.

It didn't seem strange to her when, of all the people standing at the airport terminal, she went to Ray Kowalski first, put her arms around him, and pulled him into a hug. He was just as much family, at that moment, as her own blood.

On the way out the children were cheerful, Myra riding on her Daddy's hip, the twins hanging one on each side of their mother. She noticed with concern that Raymondo was being careful not to wince. Willie and Angelica held each other's hands, as though they had never let go, and Ray Kowalski? Ray Kowalski had a tendency to drift to the left or right. No wonder Willie had been leading him. The poor man would have been walking into walls, if she'd let him. She hooked her arm around him, and steered. When they'd all piled into the car, kids wriggling, Raymondo drove. She closed her eyes, and listened to the family and...

She remembered that young man, the first time Raymondo brought him home to dinner. Polite, somewhat bewildered by the noise, not sure what polenta was. His napkin tucked not just into his shirt, but his suspenders. How long ago had that been, now?

A life time ago, obviously.

Oh God. She felt like she lost a son.  
… ...

Well, it was back to work then. Ray shouldered open the door to his office, feeling the cardboard boxes on the other side scrape across the floor. Jeez, he thought, Benny would have a fit if he could see the mess.

Crap. Already things were feeling ordinary. Chicago was closing in, and the funeral was over and... it felt like normal. Shouldn't feel like normal, not so soon. For a moment Ray closed his eyes, thinking he was a fucking awful friend. Should be in bits like Kowalski...

Nah, everybody’s grief was different. He knew that. A brother's grief was different from a lover's. And besides, he consoled himself, it helped that he had a plan. 

The door swung shut with a slam behind him, and he dropped the Benny case files on his desk. “What the hell?” He pinched his nose, looked around him. The office was permeated with a terrible smell, and he couldn't for the life of him think what it was. He started rummaging through drawers, and couldn't find anything. Then, his foot caught against the waste basket, and he saw the source of the offensive odour. The remains of lunch from ten days ago. Pulling a face he tipped the garbage into an oversized carrier bag, tied a knot in it, then carried it through the outer office, out the back door, finally dropping the offending rubbish into the dumpster he shared with the Chinese takeaway next door. 

Not for the first time, he found himself thinking that in the old days he and Benny would probably have cosied down in that dumpster, and he'd have come out smelling like a sewer, and Benny would have come out smelling of roses. 

“Hello, Ray.”

“Shit!” Ray turned, and there he was, again. “Benny, what you trying to do, give me a heart attack?”

“No, Ray... not at all. Why, you don't have cardiac problems, do you?”

Ray stared at his friend, and the absurdity of the situation hit him, like a Kowalski punch. He started laughing. He was laughing hard enough that he backed right up against the wall, next to the dumpster, and doubled up, clutching his stomach. 

“Ray?” Fraser looked troubled. “Are you all right?”

“Nah, I'm fine.” Ray straightened, and smiled, wiping his eyes. “Just... can't believe that a ghost is asking after my health. I mean, of the two of us, you gotta admit, I'm in better health.”

“Ah... I see. Yes, the situation does seem a trifle odd, doesn't it?”

“I've known worse. Hey...” Ray couldn't stop smiling. Oh, Jeez, Benny. Okay, it was stupid, he was still dead but... “You look a damned sight better than when I last saw you.”

“Ah... yes. Willie pointed out that my appearance was somewhat disconcerting, so I made an effort to change it.” Benny looked down at his red uniform, and smiled at the hat in his hands. “Better?”

“Yeah...” Ray knew he probably looked goofy, and totally lunatic, chatting away at the wall and talking ten to the dozen but... wow, Benny. His friend still looked his age, his hair was still slightly wavy, and he was still sporting five o'clock shadow. But... he looked pretty good for a dead guy. Not that his appearance was exactly up to code, particularly for Benny, but... “Yeah, it looks tonnes better than blood and gore.” He flinched, thinking of the crime scene photos, or the painted corpse at the funeral. “But, you know, if Thatcher had ever seen you like that she'd have hung your hide up on the wall to scare the other Mounties.”

“Well, it's hard to find a good barber in the afterlife,” Benny said, sounding slightly snippy. Then his brow crinkled, and a thoughtful look came upon him, as though he was calculating some improbably huge number. “It's no wonder that my father had trouble maintaining his appearance. I always did wonder why he stole my hat.”

Ray cocked his head to one side, stuck his hands in his pockets, and shrugged. This was... a surprisingly Benny conversation. “Well, I always thought your old man mighta showed up.”

“Why didn't you say anything?”

“Oh, you know. Father and son stuff. Probably personal.” Ray remembered his own conversations with Pop, and repressed a shudder. “Well, you'd better come in. No need for us to stand out here talking when I've got my own personal midden inside. Home sweet home, and all that.” He swung open the back door, still grinning, and made a slight bow, like a butler, before following his friend inside.

“Oh, good Lord...” Benny surveyed the “midden” with a look of dawning horror.

“Hey, come on,” Ray chose to scowl, for the joyful familiarity of teasing Benny, and opened the window. He didn't know if ghosts had a sense of smell, but he did, and boy, this place was rank. “I've not been here for nearly two weeks, it's not my fault the place is a junk yard.”

Fraser gave a frown, his face radiating disapproval. “Has your mother seen this place?”

“No. I keep Ma well clear of my business, wouldn't be good for her blood pressure.”

“She knows you're a private detective, of course?”

“Of course. She just doesn't need to know everything I do. Thinks I ride desk.”

“So, what case are you working on now?”

Ray sighed, and flung himself onto his swivel chair. He gesticulated at the files he'd brought in with him. “What do you think? Your case.”

“Oh.” Benny had the nerve to look touched and surprised.

“What, you didn't think I'd look into it? What kinda friend do you think I am, Benny? Jeez, I'm insulted.”

“I'm sorry, Ray, I didn't mean to insult you. It's just... things are rather odd for me right now. I'm having trouble remembering...”

“Remembering what?”

“How things feel. When... you know, when one thing follows another.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, when I'm talking to you, or Willie, things occur sequentially, as they... as they did when I was alive. But in-between times...” His face went distant and strange. “In-between times are somewhat confusing.”

“Hang on...” Ray leaned forward and put his elbows on the desk, scrubbed his eyes. He should have picked up on this before... Damn, he must be whacked or stupid. “That's the second time you mentioned Willie. You're telling me that he can see you too?”

“Yes, Ray. Though,” Benny smiled approvingly. “You seem to be taking it rather better than he did. You haven't questioned your sanity once.”

“Nah, you're here. That means I've got to be the sane one in this room.” Ray laughed. God, it felt good to wind up Benny. Never thought he'd get to do it again... “Besides,” he pointed out, “I got experience.” Benny looked as though he was going to query that last comment, but stopped when Ray raised his hand and shook his head in the international sign of 'don't ask.' “So... since you're here, Benny, you gonna help me solve your murder?”

“Oh!” Benny looked startled for a moment, then smiled. “I suppose that might be one reason why I'm here.”

“Besides telling me how godawful my office is?”

“Well, it is quite appalling...”

“Go on. You're my main witness. Tell me what happened.”

“Ah... about that...”  
…

Willie was...not quite used to the spectral wolf currently dozing under his desk, but at least he wasn't freaked out by him anymore. If he was, in fact, going insane, it didn't seem to be getting any worse. Which was encouraging... probably. And he appeared to have left Fraser's ghost in Canada.

It should have been a relief, he thought, but for some reason... Yeah, he had to be honest. It had been nice to see him, even if he could have done without the stomach wound. It had been nice to hear Fraser lecture him on keeping his uniform tidy, to sit next to him on a bench discussing metaphysical nonsense about the afterlife.

Yeah... it was shock, that was all it had been. And, he'd get over it. Probably sometime soon he'd look down, and Dief wouldn't be there...

He looked down, and Dief's head was up, ears cocked excitedly, nose moving from side to side and eyes slightly crossed as he watched a fly weaving in front of him.

Okay. So Dief was a pretty persistent and very convincing hallucination. Maybe he should see a shrink...

At least he should say something to Angie. Last night they had been sneaking a kiss in the car just before he dropped her back at her mother's, when Dief bounced up from the back seat and started licking. It felt like a wet slither of inchoate ice (like fog, only solid and slippy) and he'd leapt away from it with a shout, banging his head on the window. “Thought I heard something,” he muttered, by way of explanation, thinking he came across as a sorry excuse for a police officer if that was how he reacted to an unexpected noise. Or a ghost mutt, truth be told. He should be getting used to Dief by now... Since he'd come back from Canada he and Angelica hadn't had a chance yet to... return to those activities that her family pretended they didn't know nuffink about. He'd have to figure out some way to persuade Dief to not make himself comfortable on the bottom of the bed. He could sleep with him down there, that was fine, even if it did make for chilly feet. But a block of ice on the bottom of the bed during sex? Ghostly eyes? Somehow, he thought, that would be a big turn off. Yeah... ghost dogs. Great for the chastity movement. 

“You caught up with that paper work, Lambert?” The Captain was walking past, a clutch of files under her arm and a Styrofoam cup of something black and inky. (The term coffee machine was a misnomer, Willie thought. It was an anti-coffee machine... he wondered was that a prerequisite of office work places. The anti-coffee machine.)

“Nearly, Sir, I'm on the last report.”

She sighed, seemingly exasperated. He realised he'd done it again, called her “Sir.” Another Fraserism, he thought, or at least a Canadianism. Nobody called her Captain Murphy, but the one time he'd tried calling her Ma'am, as everyone else did, she'd commented on that too, as though she thought it was funny he was making the effort. Well, she already considered him odd. He'd stick with “Sir.” Ma'am made her sound like the queen anyway.

“Okay, good work Lambert. Listen... I know you're just back from your friend's funeral, you doing okay?”

Willie looked down at Dief, who seemed to be trying to peer up Captain Murphy's skirt. He turned his gaze from the incongruous spectacle, reassured himself that, despite the evidence, he was not crazy, and fixed his attention on the boss's face. “Yes, Sir, I'm fine.”

“Good, good. Well then... I'm partnering you up with Nutall today.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

She looked at him, wryly. Willie had done his best to hide it, but his antipathy for Nutall, and Nutall's reciprocation of the feeling, must be pretty obvious. She pulled a face, and changed the subject. “You've got a really bad draft round here...” she looked at the floor, right through Dief, then straightened, and rolled her shoulders. “Carry on,” she nodded, and walked to the office. 

Nutall, Willie thought, trying not to roll his eyes. Greatness...  
… ...

Nutall didn't seem any more impressed with the situation than he did. He wasn't quite a rookie, having a full year longer on the force than Willie, and made absolutely sure that Willie knew who was the boss. Not that Willie minded. For the most part Nutall was all bluster, but when it came to the job he did get things done. But he was... Willie wasn't sure. He wasn't sure if it was racism, or normal male posturing taken up a notch, or if he'd just rubbed the man up the wrong way.

Whatever. Nutall had some kind of problem him, and he didn't think that highly of Nutall himself. Damn. Just his luck. Maybe he should just come clean with the Captain, and let her know that he preferred to be partnered up with Bo. They could actually work together without biting each other's heads off. Willie kept his head down as he typed up his last form, ignoring the scowl of his partner, who was similarly employed with paper work behind his own desk.

Just as he put the final full stop on his report the phone rang. His left hand reached out automatically for the receiver, while his right hand pulled the paper from the typewriter. (And why were they using typewriters in this day and age? What was this, the Jurassic era? He'd come to work in a car for Pete's sake, not riding a damned dinosaur.) He was just going through the regular cop spiel introduction when the caller interrupted. 

“Hey, Willie, it's me.”

“Oh, hey Vecchio.” Chicago Ray, not Canada Ray. “How you doing?”

“Fine, you know... just... er...” There was a bit of a silence, and Willie scratched his head, waiting for his friend to find the rest of his sentence. Nutall, at the other desk, was giving him the evil eye. Willie adopted his 'Spock' face, and affected interest in his paper work. The silence stretched on, and for a moment he thought that he'd have to say something to prompt a response, when Vecchio blurted it out.

“Listen, Willie, you might think I'm cracked but... you had any visits from Benny recently?”

“What?” Thank God he'd adopted the Spock persona. At least it was only his voice that gave away his shock. Dimly he was aware of Nutall looking up again, with a crafty glint in his eyes. It didn't particularly matter.

“Look, sorry, I don't mean to... you know... just... well...”

“You've seen...” Willie closed his eyes. He couldn't say 'Fraser' at work, because everyone would know exactly who he was talking about. The Mountie was still famous. “You've seen... Ben?”

“Yeah... and he... he said you could see him too?”

Okay... either he was having a fully fledged psychotic break, or he actually was being haunted. For a minute he thought of hanging up the phone and walking up to the Captain, asking for sick leave before high-tailing it to the nearest psychiatrist. He took a deep breath. 

No. Vecchio's voice was real, and the urgency of his tone was real, and...

Damn. The captain had felt the cold under his desk... there was no draft, and he knew it. Dief was real.

Bite the bullet. He shut his eyes, briefly, opened them. (You're at work, be Spock.) “Yes,” he said, carefully. “Yes, I have seen Ben.”

“Oh, thank God. Listen, Willie... you've got to come over here. I've got a lead on his murder.”

Willie was on his feet in an instant, preparing to make his exit, when Nutall spoke up, sourly. “Hey, Lambert, get off the phone with your boyfriend. We've got a case.”

Shit, he thought. Work... 

“Okay, I'll have to see you when my shift's over. Show me what you've got on the... Ben case.”

“Sure thing, kid.” Ray sounded relieved, and hung up.

Nutall was standing, throwing things aggressively into his inbox. Willie felt the urge to go Fraser on his arrogant ass, and chide him for disorganisation. (It's never the wrong time for neatness, Son.) He confined himself to raising a disapproving brow, and sauntered past him. “Meet you at the carpool,” he said, knowing that by the time Nutall had sorted his stuff out he'd already have the key and be in the driving seat. Nutall cursed behind him as he made his way through the door. Once out of sight Willie looked down at Dief, and smirked.

Dief was real. Fraser was real. He wasn't going mad... he'd just found out the world was bigger. And that was...

For the first time in days he was grinning from ear to ear. Kowalski popped into his head again. “Greatness,” he said, and started running, two steps at a time, down the stairs.  
… ...

It's dark in here, and warm, and he's not moving. Ray burrows down in bed, and drags the sheets up. Downstairs he can hear the Vecchio clan. Turnbull and Frannie live about three doors down the road, and the kids charge in first thing in the morning for pancakes and orange juice, home prepared bagged lunches. There's about three quarters of an hour of shouting and yelling, and thundering footsteps coming up and down the stairs, and at some point one of the twins opens the door and stares in at him. Then Frannie's shooing him down the stairs and saying, 'let the man sleep, Joey, what are you thinking?'

Yeah. Sleep. About that...

So, he's not exactly sleeping, but he's not getting up. He knows he'll have to, eventually, but for now...

It's dark, and warm, and he's not moving. He pulls the pillow over his head.  
… ...

Nutall was still sulking about the fact that Willie was driving when the call came through, telling them something had taken priority over their graffiti case. 

“Girl's gone missing in East Garfield Park. Sarah Eddison. She's about seven. Her Mom thought she was at school, school thought she'd taken the day off. So, she's been missing about six hours. Last seen she was getting off the bus outside Our Lady of Sorrows. Nearest guys need to check up on it.”

“Fuck,” Nutall muttered, and hung onto his seat as Willie swung the car round. “Yeah,” he said, scowling at Willie, “tell them we'll be five minutes. We're on our way.” 

Once the radio was silent Nutall started sniping. “Do you have to drive like a lunatic?”

Be Spock, Willie thought, and said nothing.

“Hey, I'm talking to you.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon. I thought it was a rhetorical question designed to relieve tension. I didn't realise you expected an answer.”

“What the hell is it with you? You swallow a damned dictionary?”

Willie remembered asking Fraser the same question, and nearly smiled. 

“Is that another rhetorical question?”

No sooner had he said it than he felt ashamed of himself. He was having far too much fun winding his partner up, and a little girl was missing. And that... that woman standing with her hands in fists in front of her face, being held by a nun, that must be the girl's mother. He sighed, and pulled up. He thought of his own mother, with a twinge of regret. He had gone missing for days on end when he was a kid, and his mother had never noticed. She lived in her own time zone. Did then, did now. First time he met Vecchio, the guy said, “you don't have a mother.” Willie hadn't corrected him because, really, by that stage, it might as well be true. 

“Mrs Eddison?” Oh God, the poor woman. She was rocking backward and forward, wailing. It was going to be hard to get anything coherent from her. Willie put his hand on her shoulder, and squeezed, gently, putting every ounce of sympathy he could into his face. She turned and looked at him, took in his uniform, and leant forward, crying on his chest. He patted her patiently until she'd cried herself into a state of near calm. Nutall was standing a few feet off, talking to the nuns.

“Mrs Eddison, please... can you tell me everything you remember. Anything that could help us find your daughter?”

“Yes, uh, yes... She was fine when she left this morning. She had her lunch, and some pocket money, and her school bag. All her homework was done. She's, she's, such a good girl.”

“Yes, I'm sure she is.” He gentled his hand on her back. She was still standing up close to him, as though he was a wall she could wail against. “What was she wearing when she went this morning?”

“Uh, she had on her woolly jumper, the one her Granma knitted. Green. Kind of, lacy pattern. Fluffy... I can't describe it properly.”

“You're doing fine. So, she was wearing a woollen jumper, lacy and fluffy... do you mean cashmere?”

“Oh... no, but it was mock cashmere. Mom... my Mom, couldn't afford the real stuff, but it looked pretty good.”

Talking about concrete detail was calming the woman down. Cool. Keep her talking. “So, other than that, what was she wearing?”

“Red dress, little black shoes with buckles, and...” her face crumpled again. “White socks. With frills on them.”

“Okay, Mrs Eddison, you're doing really well. Do you have a picture of Sarah?”

“Yes, here, in my purse...” She drew out a picture of a little girl. African American, but with dark reddish hair, and green eyes. 

“She looks like a lovely girl, Mrs Eddison, you must be proud of her. Now, don't worry. We're going to do our best to find her, and what you've told us will really help. So, if you come over here and sit with the sister, we'll have someone take you over to the station. My colleague and I are going to start looking.”

“When you see her, give her this?”

Willie reached out, and took a faded rag doll in his hands. It smelled of lavender.

“She likes Lavender Lilly,” Mrs Eddison said. “She helps her get to sleep at night. That's why...” she sniffed. “That's why I put lavender in with the wash, so she's got a happy thought at school.”

“Thank you, Mrs Eddison,” Willie said reassuringly. They were still within the twenty four hour golden zone, when chances were good they would find Sarah. 

Of course, there was always the chance that they might find her...

He chose not to dwell on that. He turned and glanced at Nutall. Still interviewing nuns. 

Dagnabbit, would Dief never stop nudging him? What was it now?

He looked down, and saw that the dog was attempting to... what? Grasp his trouser leg? As though... shit. A ghost Lassy. Just what he needed... 

“He's got a scent, Son,” came a voice.

He jumped. Couldn't help it... even though he knew now Fraser was real, he still couldn't help it. That voice came up behind him, and he jumped nearly out of his skin. Crap, he hoped nobody had noticed. Turning to look at Fraser he thought quickly and pulled out his cell phone, holding it to his head, so he could start talking without looking like too much of a maniac.

“You've got to stop scaring me like that. I nearly had a heart attack.”

Fraser looked puzzled. “Ray said the same thing. But you're a bit young to have cardiac problems...”

Willie shook his head. Maybe being dead had given Fraser Aspergers' syndrome. He knew the man was literal, but he'd always understood metaphors before.

“I'm fine, just... what's Dief doing?”

“Well, he seems to have caught some kind of a scent but...”

“But what?”

“Well, I'm afraid that being dead has rather affected some of my senses... smell and touch basically. I suspect Dief is similarly afflicted, though of course his sense of smell having always been stronger he has at least got a trace of something...” Fraser paused, scratched his jaw speculatively. “You know, I have an idea, but you're probably not going to like it...”

“Go on. If it helps us find the girl...”

“All right then. Well... perhaps if you assisted Dief by...”

“By what?”

“Well, sniffing. Where he is right now. He seems to have formed quite a bond with you. Perhaps if you can smell it, so can he.”

Willie found himself reconsidering the question of his sanity. Then...

“Oh, what the hell,” he muttered, well aware that if any of his colleagues heard him they'd be shocked by his mild profanity. Feeling very hot behind the ears, and grateful that at least nobody could see him blush (and that must really tick white people off, for their embarrassment to be broadcast so clearly) he got down on his knees, and started sniffing. Dief yipped, and his tail started wagging like a flag. 

“Oh, good, that seems to have worked.” Fraser sounded extremely cheery. Willie peered up at him, gave him a dirty look. 

“You mean I might have been doing this for nothing?”

“No, no... I was nearly certain it would work.”

“Nearly...” He shut his eyes, in resignation. 

“Willie, a thought... Dief seems to be trying to lick something...”

“Oh for the love of...” He opened his eyes, and saw Dief scrabbling, ineffectively, at a small pebble. It seemed a little late now to preserve his dignity. He plucked up the pebble, angry enough to throw it, and touched it with the tip of his tongue. For a moment it just tasted of rock and then...

He sat up on his haunches with a jerk. His tongue, lips and nose were flooded with a scent, so strong that his eyes and mouth started to water. Dief was dancing up and down now, barking like a mad thing. 

“Oh... sorry,” Fraser said, “I should have foreseen that... you seem to have had a symbiotic moment... you sensed what Dief did, as he sensed what you did.”

“Makes about as much sense as anything else...” Thank God that sharp taste was beginning to recede. It was still there, but at least now it had faded to a tolerable level, and he could recognise it... “Lavender,” he said.

“Well, Dief's got the scent now,” Fraser pointed out. “Maybe you should follow him.”

Willie stood, briskly, and brushed his knees. Embarrassed, he looked around, taking in the frankly incredulous stares of the nuns and Nutall (thank God Mrs Eddison didn't seem to have noticed anything amiss) and resisted the urge to start explaining himself. 

Dief was beginning to lope off. Crap, no time to explain himself, even if he could think of anything to say.

He set off after Dief, long legged and loping himself, cursing himself for a fool every step of the way.  
… ...

Sister Christine stood staring at the strange young police man, receding into the distance. She turned to his colleague for an explanation. 

“Did he just...”

“Lick the pavement?”

“Yes...”

“It looks like it.”

“Does he do this kind of thing often?”

“Uhm... No. First time. That I know of.”

“Is it a... tribal thing?”

“Honestly, Sister? I don't have a fucking clue.”  


... ... 

Dief led him unerringly through the streets, and Willie kept pace, trying to pay attention to his stride and his breathing, rather than his increasing concern that he was going to be forced to see a shrink when this thing was done. He didn't have long to worry, however. Dief was now scratching (or attempting to) at the door of an abandoned building.

“In here?” Willie said, forgetting that Dief was deaf. He stepped up to the door, wondering if he would have to break in, when he realised the door was already unlocked. Carefully, he eased it open, gun ready in case of trouble.

No sooner was he in than Dief started running again, this time up to a corner, where a little bundle lay.

Oh, Jesus, he thought, skidding across the dusty floor, avoiding the scatterings of broken plaster and rubbish. Don't let her be...

The little bundle sat up, and revealed itself to be a small girl. She took one look at the tall man with the gun, and screamed. Willie dropped to his knees, putting the gun away and stretched out his open hands. “Hey, Sarah... it's okay. Your Mom sent me to get you.”

She gazed at him dolefully. Something in his demeanour seemed to relax her. “Is she angry?” Sarah sniffled.

“No, just worried. Are you okay?”

“Yeah I... just didn't want to go to school today. Timmy keeps pinching me, and he's been taking my dinner money.”

“Oh... I see.” Willie's heart lifted with relief. No kidnap, nothing as ugly as he had feared. “Well, I'll tell the teachers about Timmy, and we'll make sure it won't happen again.” Damned straight, he thought. School ground bullying was big and ugly enough when you were seven. “Now... do you want to come with me and see your Mommy?”

Sarah nodded, mutely, tears glistening on her lashes. 

“Come on, sweetheart. Hey, look who your Mom gave me? Lavender Lil.” Sarah smiled at the sight of her doll, and walked up to where he knelt. Tucking her dolly in right under her jumper, she hung on him, trustingly. He stood, and carried her through the doorway. For a moment Fraser smiled at him proudly. He winked out before Willie could think of a way to thank him. Didn't matter... now Willie knew he'd be back.

Ten minutes after he'd taken off in pursuit of Dief he rounded the corner to the church, with little Sarah hooked on his left hip, and her fingers laced around his neck. He felt... Probably the best damned feeling he'd had yet as a cop. Sarah's Mom saw her, and screamed, came running, and in amongst all of the hugging, and kissing, and disbelieving looks from Nutall and the nuns, Willie realised there was just no way he would ever be Spock enough to stop smiling now.

He looked down at Dief, and covertly petted the chilly air.  


… ...

Ma Vecchio knocks on the door and steps through it without waiting for an answer. Ray hunkers in, and pretends to be asleep. He knows it's her house (well, still Vecchio's actually) but whatever, he doesn't like the fact that someone can just walk in on him. 

She walks over to the window, throws back the curtains, and lets in the light, fiddles with a hatch, and lets in some air, and the noise from the street outside. 

“Come on, Son, out of bed.”

Oh God, Vecchio's right. He always said Ma had no mercy.

“I've got to change the sheets. So unless you want me to roll you off the mattress, get yourself up in the next five minutes. You've got an hour before the kids come over, and I'm sure you don't want them to think you've been sitting around stinking the house up all day while they've been at their lessons.”

Huh, Ray covers his ears. Ma isn't exactly the cuddly teddy bear everyone thinks. Crap... just what he needs. Someone to make him feel like a fourteen year old rebel refusing to go to school.

Brisk footsteps bustle around the room, then they walk to the door. “I'll be back in five minutes with the vacuum. You better be up when I get here.”

He remains curled up for a further five minutes. Exactly on cue he hears her trundling up the stairs, banging what he assumes is the vacuum cleaner on every step. Jeez, she's really gonna do it.

He sits up, slams out of bed, and throws his pillow at the wall.

“All right, all right, I'm up,” he declares, astonished. Normally he loves Ma Vecchio, but today? She's lucky he's a gentleman, or he'd knock her on her old lady ass.

“Good boy,” she replies through the door. “Coffee's on the stove, I've made you some pastries.”

Holy crap, he thinks, puzzled and angry. Someone's finally got him to feel something other than numb. What is it with the Vecchios? First Ray Vecchio breaks the dam and lets him cry, and now his mother... 

Suddenly he's laughing. Crafty old woman. No wonder everyone loves her.  


... …

Willie turned up at the office, finally, grinning like a pumpkin (a good look on the kid, all things considered, and not one he often indulged in while in uniform). Ray went to hug him, then shuddered and jumped back at a cold push to his leg.

“Jeez, is that Dief?”

“Yeah... he's been...” Willie paused to grin again. “He's been helping me on a case.”

“Really?” Ray couldn't help it. Ghost Fraser... yeah, that he understood. Should have been expecting it, really. But for some reason it had never dawned on him that an animal might also have a ghost. “Helping you on a case? What the hell can a dead, deaf, half wolf do?”

“Make me look like a fool, get me sniffing and licking pebbles so he can pick up the scent, and then run straight to the rescue, leaving yours truly looking like some kind of a mad genius hero.”

“Licking pebbles...” Ray stared at the young man, and felt a smile tugging at him. “You mean Dief made you do a Benny?”

“Yeah...” Willie plonked himself down on the chair for clients. “It was Fraser's idea, actually. Worked too... Dief smelled what I did. So now everybody at work thinks I've got superpowers.” Willie swung a little in his chair, grinning. “Feels good.”

“Well, Benny and his wolf have made me do some weird things,” admitted Ray, “but they never got me licking the side walk.”

Willie chuckled, then settled gravely back into his normal work persona. If Ray didn't know the kid, he'd buy the act it was so damned perfect. Christ, he thought, irreverently, Benny had a lot to answer for. He remembered back when Willie was an angry street punk, now look at him. The kid had been well and truly Frasered. “So,” Willie was saying, in his professional voice, “you said you had a lead on the case?”

“Well, yes. Turns out we have a witness.”

“Who?” 

Ray quirked a grin. “Who do you think? Benny.”

“D'oh...” Willie rolled his eyes at himself, and slapped his palm against his forehead, utterly ruining his impersonation of a zen master. “Should have thought of that.”

“Listen, kid it's okay. It's not like you're used to being haunted. But...” he stared at Dief, puzzled. “How long has Dief been hanging around?”

“Since the funeral,” Willie admitted. “He creeped me out at first, but it's nice having him back.” The young man's hands appeared to stroke the spectral fur, and Vecchio felt his skin crawl. He knew what 'spook' felt like to the touch, it wasn't something he'd willingly put his fingers to.

“Okay.” He nodded slowly. “So, you've seen Benny too...”

“Yes. At the graveyard, after the funeral, at the hotel. And today.”

“And... you're okay with that?”

“Getting there. Now that I know I'm not cracking up.”

Ray nodded. “Good. Well, I've seen him, twice. This time we had a good talk, and we got some progress.”

“Does he know who shot him?”

“Well, that's where it's a little complicated. He knows who he was protecting... but he can't remember exactly why.”

“He can't remember why?”

“Apparently being dead gives you amnesia.”

“Greatness, just what we need.” Willie shook his head. “Okay then, so... who was he protecting?”

“This lady here,” Ray opened his file. “Helen Nulty.”

Willie took the proffered photograph, and stared. Rubbed his ear. “I know this woman,” he said, surprised. “We've been called out to her place what, a dozen times in the last five years. Her boyfriend's beaten her black and blue. Well, those are the occasions we know about. She's a frequent flier at the hospital too.”

“Yeah,” Ray retrieved the picture, put it back in his file. “So do I. Even back in the day, you know, when he was helping you with your homework and blowing up my riv, she was having trouble with this guy.”

“You mean to say, she's been putting up with this guy for ten years?”

“Probably more. They were 'high school sweethearts,'” Ray felt his face turn sour. “And she seemed to think they were like, I dunno, Romeo and Juliet.”

“I assume she changed her mind?”

“Yeah. Yeah.” Ray folded his hands together, leaning over his desk, realised he looked like he was praying, and stood, deciding to make coffee. He didn't want to look at anyone for this next bit. Busily he put coffee in the percolator, filled the upper tank with water, and flicked the switch. The smell of coffee gradually filled the office. He stood with his back to Willie, and continued. “She got pregnant. Not on purpose... he'd told her he didn't want kids. Still... she thought it might change things. Well, he accused her of sleeping with other guys, said it wasn't his baby. And then...” Jeez, this was horrible. “Then he beat the baby out of her. Damn near killed her.”

There was a long silence from Willie, and Ray said nothing, letting the coffee drip. He crossed his arms over his chest, and tried not to think of Frannie's first husband. Finally Willie spoke.

“Sorry,” he said.

“Not our fault, kid,” Ray said. “But yeah, eventually she got wise, and ran. Ran to the Canadian consulate first. Seems she thought the Chicago PD were sick of her, and she remembered Benny was kind to her.” He poured out coffee, and turned back to Willie, his face schooled again. “Benny's good at that... being kind to people. You know, he makes us, made us, better than we woulda been.”

Willie smiled, looking very young, and took his mug. “Yeah, he was good at that. Look at me.” 

“So, anyway, she realised he wasn't in Chicago any more. Got freaked out when they told him he was up in the Arctic circle. Then some kind soul told her he was visiting his sister.” He shook his head. “And I wouldn't have taken Maggie for the Toronto type, you know, but then, I'd never have took Kowalski as the frozen ass end of the North type either.”

“So Helen went up to Toronto?”

“Yeah. And Benny, you know what he's like, he's kinda conspicuous. Even when he's not in uniform. So, she just asked for the Mountie, and even in a country crawling with Mounties, people knew who the hell she meant.”

“And so, she found him.” It wasn't a question. It was a bleak statement. Willie was staring into his coffee, as though it held all the answers. Ah, poor kid.

“Well,” Ray continued, “Benny remembers her running to him, asking for help, remembers standing in front of her... and after that...”

“What?”

“Well, after that he's not that good of a witness. Cause after that what he mainly remembers is him fighting to not go into the light, and then... well, I couldn't make much sense of what he was telling me. Though, you know what, when it's my turn? I'm going into the light. Cause what he was saying was pretty psychedelic and scary stuff...”

“He's all right, isn't he? I mean, it's not like he's in...” Willie's face was definitely not Spock now. Not at all.

“Hey, kid, don't worry, he's not in hell.”

Willie breathed a sigh of relief. “I know, silly thing to worry about, but...”

“Yeah, it's hard not to worry about someone you love.”

Willie nodded, fractionally, and sipped his coffee. “Hey, I don't believe it, you got a coffee machine that makes actual coffee,” he said, changing the subject.

“Yeah,” Ray chuckled. “Cause that other stuff rips your guts out, and I'm fighting an ulcer as it is.”

“Coffee isn't good for you, Ray,” Benny's voice interjected. Willie and Ray both jumped in their seats, Willie slopping coffee on his jacket. 

“Fantastic,” he sighed, pulling tissues from his pocket and swiping at the spill. Then he smiled up at the ghost, with bright affection. For a moment he looked like the little boy he used to be, radiant at the promise of a trip to the zoo. (And damn, Ray remembered that day. It was before the zoo was forever ruined, for him and Fraser both. Willie's excitement at seeing lions and giraffes for the first time. Poor kid had lived in this city, all his life, and never been to the zoo.) He blinked back to the here and now. Willie was still talking. “Hi Fraser. Thanks for your help, earlier.”

“No, thank you,” Benny was grinning happily at the lad. “You took some risks. You didn't have to trust me, and start sniffing things...”

Ray laughed. “You know what Kowalski's always saying? You, Benny, are a freak.”

“Thank you, Ray.”

“So, you remembered anything else?”

“No. I just wanted to say thank you, to both of you. For doing... this.” He gestured at the case files, then grinned at the two men again. “I'm sorry, I can't stay...”

“Fraser...” Willie was standing, but it was too late. Benny had gone. With a sigh, Willie sat down again, and resumed mopping the stain from his jacket. He'd mopped it dry already. This was one of his 'I want to hide' gestures.

“Hey, kid,” Ray tried to catch his eye. “Over here,” he said. Willie stopped what he was doing, and looked up. “It'll be all right, you know? It really will. It'll be all right.”

If he believed it hard enough, it would have to be true.  


… ...

There he is. If I had breath, it would have caught in my throat. If I had a heart, it would be beating faster. Instead, all I have is the memory of that hitch, that moment of 'oh', at the sight of my beloved. Ray, sitting on a couch, covered in infant Vecchios. For the first time since the... since I... for the first time since I was shot, Ray's looking a little bit alive again. Just a little bit brighter. He was always good with children. 

And... oh. I'm not in the Vecchios' living room any more. I'm in the park... No. Not I. We. We are in the park, two weeks ago, in Toronto, after dark. Ray is grinning mischief at me.

“We can't, Ray, honestly.”

“Sure we can. We can do anything we like.”

“No... no, we really can't.”

“Yeah. Yeah, we can. You wanna know why I can?”

“Why?”

“'Cause I'm a kid myself, Ben, whatcha think? You wanna be a kid with me?”

And he runs to the swings, jumps up on the seat, standing, hands on the chains, and starts to push with his legs, swinging.

“Come on, wuss! Let's see who gets higher...”

And I'm standing on a swing, cold chains biting into my palms, as Ray pushes out into night air. The swing creaking, Ray flashing past, his sheer presence an urge and a goad to me, to push harder, fly faster...

And laugh. Laughing. I'm happy. He's happy. We. We are so happy...

The night-time and the laughter of men gives way to a school morning, and the laughter of children, and Ray... looking put upon, and tired, but nearly smiling.

Now might not be the time to...

I can't help myself. How could anyone help themself? “Ray?” Nobody hears me. When I sigh it's not even a gust on the air. I perch, spectrally light, on the arm of the couch, and drift my hand to Ray's cheek. I can't feel it. 

Ray turns his head, toward my hand. For a moment I feel a breath, as though I still had skin, a touch of warmth. “Ray?” I bend my head toward my beloved. Sigh again. “Ray. Oh, Ray, Ray, Ray.” 

Ray blinks. 

“What's wrong, Ray,” asks a little girl... Myra, Frannie and Turnbull's daughter.

“Sorry,” Ray says. “I thought I heard something.”

He heard. Oh, God, he heard... I lean closer, try to rest my face against Ray's cheek, yearn for a kiss...

But as I lean I tumble through. Fall. I'm falling. Falling through time, and space, and...

There's my mother, and... that's me. That's me with her. We're building a snowman. 

“Mom?” Of course, she doesn't hear me. I should know better. This is long ago. She's not really there.

Little Benny turns to me, looks puzzled. For a moment I think my child self is seeing me, then I realise that he's looking straight through me, at something else. Little Benny smiles. I turn, look behind me. “Dad,” says little Benny, looking at the furry figure trudging through the snow, dogs bounding along at his sides.

Dad. I haven't seen my father in years, yet here he is, now, (then) a young man, coming off patrol. And there... and there she is. Now. (Then.) Stepping into my father's arms. Oh Lord, my dear, my young, my living, vibrant mother.

“Should have gone into the light, Son,” a voice breaks in, as the scene dissolves.

“Dad?”

“You could be stuck here, a long time, waiting. What are you waiting for? Should have gone into the light.”

“But, Ray's not there.” I speak into emptiness, and there's no reply. “Dad?” I turn, listen. Turn and turn in darkness.

Ray... I reach out my heart, looking for him, trying to find him again.

“Ray?”

Nothing. Oh God. I'm back here. Again. In the nowhere, nothing, nowhen. Ray's not here. He never is. And I'm here all alone. 

Nobody's here. Nobody. Nothing and nobody. Nothing at all.  



	3. Different Kinds of Hell

“Captain? Can I see you?”

“Nuttall.” She sighed. The kid was competent enough, but he certainly tried her patience at times. He was odd. Sometimes she wondered how he'd got through his psych evaluations. There was just something... squirrelly about him. “Go on. What's happening?”

“I just wanted to talk to you about Willie Lambert.”

Ah, she thought. That damned male posturing. At least Lambert had the wit to be subtle about it. She wondered what Nuttall was grousing about now.

“I'm sure he didn't mean whatever it is you think that he said.”

“No, I don't mean... it's nothing like that, Ma'am.” Nuttall blushed, and she suddenly remembered how young he was. How young twenty-four was from her side of the hill. For goodness sake. He still had acne. 

“What is it then?”

“Er... well, he was a little bit odd today, you know, at the Sarah Eddison thing.”

“As I understand, he found the little girl.”

“Er, yes, he did. But, he was acting sorta funny.”

She sighed. “Yes, I heard. He sniffed things.”

“Uhm... yes. It's kinda weird, don't you think?”

“It worked. Lavender's a very distinctive smell, after all.”

“Okay, yeah... but, nobody else could smell it. And... he was talking on his phone, only...”

“Only what?”

“Well, it was more like he was talking to himself. I dunno, it just didn't seem right.”

“Look,” she leant across her table, and fixed him squarely in her sights. “I know you don't like Lambert, but it seems to me like you're looking for something to complain about. He did good today. You sure you're not jealous he found the kid, instead of you?”

“What? No! No, Ma'am, that's not it. I'm just saying... he might still be messed up because of this thing with the Mountie.”

Okay. That was a possibility. “What makes you suspect that?”

“He, er, he was talking on the phone, before we left on patrol, and I think he was talking to that detective, private detective I mean. You know the guy who's helped out sometimes. I could hear his voice on the phone. Vecchio?”

“Well, that's not surprising,” she pointed out. “They are family, after all.”

“Family?” He paused for a moment, looking confused. “Vecchio's white.”

“You really have the potential to be a great detective one day. I would never have noticed it myself, but yes, now that you point it out, you're absolutely correct. Vecchio is white.” She shook her head, and pulled her paperwork toward her, about to dismiss him. This wasn't worth her time.

“No... sorry. I didn't mean that to sound like... I mean, that's not what I was saying... it's just, it sounded like Vecchio and him are trying to investigate something. Like, maybe the dead Mountie.”

She looked up from her files, glanced at him sharply. “You sure?”

“Has he run anything past you, Ma'am? Because, he shouldn't be investigating stuff on his own...”

“Excuse me, young man,” she sat back in her chair, and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, settled her glasses more firmly on her nose. “You shouldn't be snooping on your colleague's phone calls. Do you want a reputation as department snitch? Because if you did actually get that reputation, you'd find yourself very lonely, very quickly.”

“No, no, Ma'am. I'm sorry, Ma'am. I was simply worried about him, that's all.”

“Worried. I see. Well, that's very caring of you, I'm sure. Not that it's any of your business, but it's only to be expected that Vecchio would be investigating the murder of his friend, and it's perfectly natural that he'd talk to Willie about it.”

“Yeah, but...”

“But me no buts, young man. If a friend of yours got murdered, wouldn't you ask a few questions yourself? Vecchio is a PI. It's his job.”

“Er... yeah, but the Mountie was murdered in Canada...”

“Look, Nutall,” she reigned in her temper, and spoke as coolly as she could. “I have to make myself perfectly clear. This is none of your business. So stop investigating your partner, and try to do some actual detecting. Now, do you have any actual work to do?”

“Er... actually, I'm finished for the day.”

“Good. Go home. And when you get back, try to leave your worries behind you. It's my job to worry. It's your job to do what you're told.”

“Yes, Ma'am.”

She gave him a stern look, hoping it would cow him a little. “So. Shut the door on the way out.”

“Yes, Ma'am.” She had the satisfaction of seeing him swallow his nerves, before he nodded, uncomfortably, in a little bow gesture, and backed out. Good grief, she thought. That conference about body language and micro expressions really wasn't as much bullshit as she'd thought. The kid was a complete kiss ass. Walking out backward... who did he think she was, the queen of England?

Still, she thought. Whatever else she might think of him, the little sycophant did keep his eyes open. It might be a good idea to watch Lambert carefully for the next few days. Vecchio was a great guy, but sometimes he seemed like a magnet for the weird and troublesome cases. She remembered clearly the whole mess when he was invalided out of the Chicago PD in the first place. He'd come back from an undercover job with the Mafia, hadn't he? She knew a lot of big names had gone down because of Vecchio. But it wasn't that. It was some terrorist case, poisonous gas and Russian tanks and so on, and he'd got himself shot defending... yeah. That was right. Defending the Mountie.

Yeah. Nutall might have a point, after all, even if the reasons were wrong. She should see if the kid really was getting himself into any trouble. She hoped not. She liked Willie Lambert, sly cheeky little so and so though he was. He had the whole department fooled with that innocent act of his. She huffed a laugh, remembering when she first saw him, some time before the Mountie came into his life. Smart mouthed street punk. Shoplifting, wasn't it? Well, that was between her and the kid. He'd turned his life around, and that took guts. Helluva lot of guts. Last thing she wanted was to see him getting hurt.  


... …

Angelica met him on the front step, dressed in... what was that stuff called? Chiffon. Foggy grey, and smoky. Drifted round her legs like a cloud, clung to her body like water.

Wow. So, he was a man, and the last thing he wanted to admit was that he knew silk chiffon when he saw it. But... he'd been surrounded by Vecchio women since he was a kid, and they really knew how to dress when they wanted to. So, yeah, he was a man, and who cared what Angie was wearing? Because, oh, good Lord, she was gorgeous. Honest, he'd been planning on saying hello, and greeting her politely, so as not to embarrass her if her folks were peering out the window... but, his mouth went dry. Before he knew it his arms slid around her waist, and he had her tilted back into a kiss, keeping his hips carefully away from her, so she didn't feel... er... anything. His fingers snuck up into her long tresses, and her mouth was opening like a flower and... He pulled back, breathless, and smiled.

“God, you're so lovely.” 

“You're not so bad yourself.”

“Why'd you get dressed up so good?” He heard his grammar slip, but it didn't particularly matter at this moment. “I mean, you're always beautiful, but this...” He let his palm smooth gently over her waist. “We're going out dancing, not eloping. I mean, not unless you want to?” He felt his face heat up at his impromptu proposal, but fortunately she missed it. He'd save that for another time, and do it right.

She laughed, a lovely contralto sound, like a bell, and slid her hands into the back pockets of his jeans. He shuddered at the pressure of her hands against his buttocks. “I just missed you,” she confided, “thought I'd look special for you tonight. Maybe cheer you up a little. You don't mind, do you?”

“Mind?” He kissed her again. “I... er...” he laughed. “Jeez, I've forgotten how to talk.”

“That's all right.” She said, and stood on tiptoe, just a little higher than her heels, whispered in his ear. “We don't have to do a lot of talking.”

God. He wasn't sure he could walk her to the car. “I'm on a late shift tomorrow,” he said, trying to sound smooth, and probably only succeeding in sounding like a horny teenager. Which, yeah he could admit it, give or take a few years, he still was. “You want to stay at mine for a lie in?”

“Hm. We'll see.” She dropped a promissory kiss on his cheek. “Let's go dancing.”  


... …

By morning Ray was feeling... well, human again. Maybe it was because the kids had worn him out, but he finally got a decent night's sleep. He'd kinda hoped he'd dream of Ben, but... apart from that whisper he'd heard earlier, when Myra and the twins were all over him, there was nothing. 

Don't think of it, he thought resolutely. It's like AA. One day at a time.

Fuck that. One minute at a time.

Yeah, he was feeling human again, but... being human hurt.

Ma Vecchio was scrubbing pans, and refusing all offers of help. Jeez. He had to do something...

“Hey,” he asked, “is Vech... I mean, Ray. Is Ray at his office?”

“Yes, I understand he's working a case.”

“You know what it is?”

“Oh, he keeps his business affairs private.” She looked at him and shook her head. “He tries not to worry me, but of course I worry just the same.”

“Yeah. I get that.” Huh, Ray thought. Why hadn't he thought of this earlier? He supposed he wasn't thinking much of anything, really. But before he ran off to Canada with Ben, and became a jack of all trades, he used to be a detective. He should do some damned detecting. And Vecchio still was a detective... private dick, but yeah, he was still in the game. And then there was young Willie, a cop.

Maybe they'd back him up on this. Someone should look into Ben's...

Death.

The word still hurt. Like he'd been kicked in the guts, like someone had broken his ribs.

Come on. Keep it together. You can do this for Ben. Ray hitched in a breath, and smiled at Ma.  
“Do you have the address? I thought I'd go see him.”

“Oh, that's a good idea, son,” she said comfortably. “Yes, the address is there, pinned on the calendar. It will do you good to get out of the house.”

Ray unpinned a leaflet, advertising Vecchio's business. Huh, looked pretty professional. “Will I need a cab?”

“You could go on foot, if you don't mind a bit of a walk. You know the city, don't you?”

“Lived here all my life.”

“Well, there's directions on the back of the pamphlet. Give me a ring, just so I know you got there okay.”

Ray laughed. “You're as bad as my own Mom,” he said. Impulsively he kissed her on the cheek. “Yeah, I'll ring you when I get there.”

Ma smiled, and turned back to the sink, blushing. God, he remembered, the old ache as he started off to Vecchio's office. As if losing Ben wasn't bad enough. 

I miss my Mom.  


... …

Willie woke up slowly, comfortably tangled in Angelica, and would have fallen back to sleep if Dief hadn't chosen that moment to leap up on the bed and shove his nose under his armpit. Nothing woke you up quite so quickly as a dead wolf sniffing your unmentionables. Willie slapped, futilely, at Dief's insubstantial nose. Dief, of course, just stood there, looming over him, doing his alpha male 'king of the pack' impersonation. Laughing. Willie remembered this particular game Dief played. When he'd been a kid, and there was nobody to look after him, he stayed over sometimes with Fraser or the Vecchios, and whenever Dief was there, he'd do this selfsame thing. 'I'm king of the jungle, get out of bed and walk me now.' That's what that big loll of a pink tongue was saying. He was being laughed at by a ghost doggy.

Maybe if he closed his eyes Dief would go away. “I'm not walking you,” he mumbled, and resolutely turned his head, tried to get back to sleep.

“Willie,” Angie groaned, and turned over, pulling the blankets with her. “Why's it so cold in here?”

Willie rolled his eyes at Dief, then grabbed the covers, tried to pull it back over his skinny ass. “Because you keep hogging the blanket, woman. Give it back.”

“No. Get your own.”

Angelica was not a morning person. Willie laughed. She was an athletic night person, as he had cause to know and celebrate. God alone knew how she managed to pull herself together on work mornings. “Hey, I don't know if you remember, but this is my bed, my blankets. So, give.” Angelica grumbled, rolled back toward him, and he snuggled in close. “I could think of ways to warm you... Ow!”

He sat up sharply, and gave Dief an absolutely filthy look. Dief had just stuck his head in a really unfortunate place. That was so not buddies it wasn't even funny. There had been wars started on less provocation. Fortunately for him, Angelica wasn't awake enough to see him giving the evils to an invisible dog. “What?” he mouthed. Dief flicked his head, and looked at the door. Aw, great. “Hey, Ange...” he couldn't help it. He was regretful. Yes, duty called, and no doubt the bat dog here had great plans to save the day, if not the city, but it was his morning off. And Ange and he had made their plans. None of which involved him licking muck off public places. Or whatever else Mutley the wonder dog had in mind.

Damn.

He dipped his head toward Angelica, sank his face into warm satin hair, inhaling the scent of coconut butter and, good Lord, chocolate. What the hell was that shampoo? Ange... Angelica. She was good enough to eat. Gently he stroked back a long ringlet, and kissed her ear. Funny thing... it really was shell-like. A pink and cream whorl. He flicked her earlobe with his tongue. Too pretty for earrings, he'd told her, back when they were fourteen. She went ahead and got them pierced anyway. So lovely...

Dief nudged again, and Willie tore himself away. “I'm sorry, sweetheart, I've got to go to work.”

“Oh,” she moaned. “I thought we had the morning...”

“I know. I'm sorry. See you tonight? After work?”

“Yeah.” She opened her eyes, blearily, and smiled. Beautiful eyes, he thought, even when she's half asleep. Green with flecks of gold, dark lashes, so pretty people thought they were falsies. The Vecchios all had lovely eyes...

He was sinking into a kiss when Dief shoved his muzzle into the small of his back. Crap! He jerked back. That was cold...

“Okay, okay, okay.” Jeez... “Sorry, Ange, gotta go. Hold that...” he put his finger on her lips. “Hold that kiss.”

“Hm.” She sucked his finger into her mouth, and rolled her tongue around it. 

He hissed. “I'll... oh, lord God...” She was looking at him wickedly, drawing his finger in, from the tip to the first knuckle, second, third... He closed his eyes. If he wasn't careful she was going to make him come just by sucking his finger. He pulled it out, regretfully, cupped her face with his hand. “I'm really sorry. I've got to go to work.”

She laid herself back down on the pillow, pouted prettily. She was doing it deliberately. She knew as well as he did that he was going to spend the rest of the day thinking about her fluffed up on his pillow, and what else she might put in her mouth other than his finger. “Well, go to work then,” she said. “I'll just dream about you instead.”

Argh! She was gonna kill him. He gave Dief one more dirty look for good measure, got to his feet, covering his groin with his hands, and made his way to the bathroom.

“You don't have to hide it, Willie,” she called as he went. “I know you've got a hard-on.”

Oh. Fuck.

“Yeah. I love you too.”

As he washed up in the bathroom, unsuccessfully willing his problem to deflate, he glared down at the innocent expression on Dief's face. “If this ain't good, I'm having you put down. Or calling an exorcist. You got me?”

Dief lolled out a happy tongue, and wagged his tail.  


... …

The door to his office swung open, and Ray looked up, startled, then sat back smiling with relief at the sight of Kowalski. Still hadn't shaved. At this rate he was going to get a pretty impressive beard. Well. Maybe not. 'Cause, first chance he got, Ray was dragging the scruffy bastard to a barber's. But still, the guy smelled of shampoo, and soap, and he'd changed his clothes. Yeah, he'd seen last night that Ma sicced the kids on him when all else failed. And it musta worked, 'cause Kowalski looked... rough, but okay.

“Hey, Kowalski, how you doing?”

“Better. Er... yeah. You busy?”

“I'm at work, ain't I?”

“Yeah, I mean, do you have room to take on another case?”

Ray pulled a face, measured up the man on the other side of the desk. “Pull up a seat, Kowal... Ray. You want some coffee?”

“Er... yeah. Hey, that smells halfway decent.”

“So, you want me to take on another case, eh? Well, I gotta tell you, I'm already on a big case, it's gonna take up all my time.”

“Oh. I thought, maybe I could hire you to look into what happened with Ben...”

Ray knew damned well he shouldn't be cross, but it rushed up in him anyway. “Jeez, Kowalski,” he snapped. “You're a dick sometimes.” He leaned back, grabbed a mug, scraped the chair across the floor to grab the coffee, then shoved the drink across the desk. “What do you think the big case is? You don't need to hire me. He was my best friend. My best brother, for fuck's sake. What do you think I am? You're as bad as...” He stopped himself. He had nearly said, 'you're as bad as Benny,' but then, he'd have had trouble explaining that one. He shook his head. “Sorry.” He passed his hand across his face, and breathed. “Sorry. I'm being a jerk. But yeah, I'm on it.”

“Okay.” Kowalski rubbed his face, fingers scritching through his bristles. “Sorry. I just... well, I've not really been thinking till this morning. Sorry. I suck.”

“Hey, you don't... Jeez.” Yeah, way to go, Vecchio, you just made Benny's boyfriend feel like shit. Stick a knife in him, why don't you? “Look, don't worry about it. I shouldn'ta barked at you.”

Kowalski pulled a face. A grimace, really, as though he was practising how to smile out of a book with lots of descriptions but no pictures. “S'alright. So... what you got so far?”

“Okay, well... this is what we got so far. I have it... hang on.” He swung down, and tugged the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet. Damn, he needed to get the thing fixed. It was still sticking. Finally it came out with a jerk, bashing him on the shin. “Fuck,” he muttered, rubbing his leg. “Yeah, here it is.”

Kowalski took the thick file, almost reverentially, and moved to open it up. “Hey,” Ray put his hand out, suddenly, holding it shut. “You want I should take the pictures out?”

“Pictures?”

“Of, you know. The...” Jesus, “the crime scene?”

Kowalski stared at him. “I've seen the crime scene,” he said. “I see it every night. I'm not gonna see anything in this I ain't seen already.”

“Okay. Okay.” Ray removed his hand, and turned with a sigh, stared at his coffee machine. He counted the drips while Kowalski read.

He'd got to a hundred and sixty three when Kowalski released a sigh, and shifted in his seat. There was a muffled noise as the folder was put down on the table.

“So,” said Kowalski.

“So.”

“Seems like you gotta witness. I mean, other than me.”

“Er... yeah.”

“So, how come they're not named in the file? I mean, I didn't see nobody else there. And this woman Benny was protecting... I mean, I remember her from when I worked the twenty seventh, but I didn't know she was still around. Who told you about her?”

“They're, uhm, incognito.”

“You trying to confuse me with Frasereeze?” Kowalski was trying to smile. It didn't look pretty.

“Nah. Just, this witness doesn't want to be named.”

“You know you can trust me.” 

“Yeah. Yeah, I know that.”

“So. Who's the witness?”

Fuck. What the hell was he supposed to say? 'Your dead boyfriend, my dead friend.' And, 'oh yeah, I speak to dead people.' “I'm really sorry, I can't say.”

“Fuck that.” Kowalski stood up, turned his back on him, shoved his hands deep into his pockets. Ray sat back, wearily rubbed his eyes as he waited for the other man to calm down. The guy had good reason to be pissed with him after all. 

“Look, if I had any choice in the matter I'd tell you...”

“You don't trust me...”

“No, I do. I really, really do. But just... I can't explain it.”

“Tell him, Ray.”

“Jesus!” Ray jerked, his chair skittering, his hand flying to his chest. Kowalski turned and stared at him like he was some kinda lunatic.

“You all right, Vecchio?”

“Yeah, no, I mean...” He took in a deep breath, and glared at Fraser, who was standing on the other side of the desk, so close to Kowalski he was nearly touching. Damn it. He couldn't even tell the guy off for nearly giving him a heart attack. Again.

Kowalski was staring at him acutely, aggressive, and suspicious, and still looking hurt from being kept out of the loop. As his attention focussed, however, his gaze became more concerned. “You don't look good, Vecchio. You wanna talk about it?”

“No,” he replied, trying not to look furiously at Fraser. “I mean... I just need some water. Gimme a minute...” Damn. He pulled open the top drawer of his desk, and pulled out the bottle of antacids he was supposed to take. Meant to take them three times a day, but he couldn't stand them. Took them when he needed them, instead. Which was more these days than he liked to admit.

The water was stale in the plastic bottle. He wondered how long it had been sitting there. He covered his eyes. More to the point, he wondered how long Benny was going to stand there, looking at him reproachfully. He let out a long drawn sigh, and leant over the desk. He was glad Kowalski was here, glad he was feeling better, but he didn't want to have to talk to him about ghosts.

He could hear Kowalski sitting again. Realised he was being quiet, patient. Probably doing the understanding cop routine, waiting for a suspect who was high or psycho to stop climbing the walls, so he could do a proper interrogation. Jeez. He wasn't going to be able to keep anything from this guy.

“Okay, okay,” he said, into the patient silence. “Gimme a minute. I need to figure out how to say this...”

“You can do it, Ray,” Benny said, cheerfully, standing behind his shoulder now. “Ray's very open-minded. And I'd sooner he heard about this from a friend.”

“Jesus, do you hear yourself? Shut the fuck up.”

“I didn't say anything,” Kowalski pointed out. He was speaking slowly, and gently, like he thought Ray was having some kinda breakdown. Which, when you thought of it, was a pretty reasonable assumption, under the circumstances. And if Benny didn't stop jumping up at him from nowhere, it might end up not that far from the truth. Ray groaned, and sat up, uncovered his face. No point hiding.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know. Look... I gotta...” Oh, thank God. There was a knock at the outside door. Might be Gloria turning up for the first time in forever, pretending she'd been working so she could collect her pay check, might be a client... who cared. It was a distraction. Ray grabbed it, gratefully. “Come in!”

“Hey, Ray...” Willie swung in the door, preceded by Diefenbaker, who bounded through like a chilly gust of winter, and bounced gleefully around Fraser's legs. “Hey, Fraser,” the lad said, then jerked. His face went stiff, and he froze, caught in limbo between Kowalski and Fraser. His adam's apple rolled, and you could actually hear him gulp.

“Hello, Son,” Fraser smiled. “Nice to see you.”

“What the fuck?” Kowalski's eyes were wide, and pale, and blazing. “Who the fuck are you two looking at?”

Okay. Kowalski was officially freaked. He wasn't the only one.

“Will somebody just tell him,” Fraser said, urgently. “Seriously, I don't mean to be a nag, but I must insist. I do think Ray has a right to know.”

“What do you want me to tell him?” Willie was a statue, only his lips moving.

“Just let him know that I'm okay.”

“You're not okay,” Willie's voice was dry as paper, crumpling up in his throat. “You're dead.”

“Willie,” Ray was on his feet, grabbing the kid by the shoulders, and pushing him backward. The kid was taller than him, but did nothing to resist, went thump against the wall. “Shut the fuck up.” Kowalski was standing now, crowding him. Benny pressed against him from the other side, and it was cold, freezing cold, and all the air was going out of the room. 

“Vecchio, what the hell is going on here?”

“Ray, Ray, Ray, Ray...”

“What?” Ray snapped his head around, whip sharp, started shouting. “What the fuck, Benny, I can't tell him just like that...”

Oh. Shit. Ray let go of Willie's shoulders, and stared at Kowalski. 

“I think...” the guy's voice was as cold as the little room. “I think you just did tell me.”

Benny shouldered his way between Ray and Willie. They shuddered and parted, letting him pass. “Ray?” Benny's face was radiant with hope as he stood by his beloved. “Can you hear me?”

“Why can't I hear him?” 

“Er...” Willie was chewing his lip. “Maybe, maybe you can?”

“No, I can't.” Kowalski was all choked up, beginning to pace back and forth in the tight room. “So either you two are the world's nastiest jokers, or there's something wrong with me. Ben can talk to you guys, but not me. Which is it? Are you just vicious bastards, or do I just suck?”

“We're not making this up.” Ray poured every ounce of sincerity into his voice, knowing, with a sinking feeling, that it wasn't going to be enough.

“Yeah? How the hell do I know?” Fists going now, hands clenching and unclenching, Kowalski was on the move. This was not good. The guy was going to hurt himself. Smacking himself on the legs. He was gonna be kicking the furniture next, breaking his knuckles on the wall.

Willie looked at Benny, calmly lifted an eyebrow. “Well?” Give that kid an Oscar. He had the cool professor look down pat. Way to take the stress down a notch or two. “Why don't you tell us something only you and he would know?”

Ray flicked his glance at Kowalski. "Like what?” The guy had his pride. “I mean. We don't need to pry or anything.”

“Oh, yeah,” Kowalski was gutted, hollowed out like a dead fish. “You're looking for a get-out-clause, so you can give me some vague reassury thingy that could apply to anyone. I know how a psychic scam works.”

“Ray,” Benny looked pained. “Why would your friends trick you like that?”

“He can't hear you,” Ray pointed out, sadly. 

“Yeah, but, why would you trick me like that,” Kowalski said, puzzled, as though arguing with himself. “I mean, I know my life's gone shit, but a friend's still a friend.”

“You see,” Willie interjected. “He does hear you, Fraser. I mean, sort of. That's twice he's done it. Sounded like he was answering something you said.”

“Lot of fat good it's doing me,” Kowalski said, and laughed, with absolutely no joy in it at all.

“Hey, sit your ass down.” Ray was getting worried now. The poor bastard had walked in looking half way human for the first time in God knows how long, and here he was being wrestled to the ground by the undead and the local crime fighting fraternity. He didn't even know about Dief yet. If they weren't careful they were going to drive the guy head first into a psychotic break. Jeez, did Benny never think? He pulled out a chair, and firmly pushed Kowalski into a sitting position. The man sat, but jiggled on the chair, like a junky jonesing for a fix.

“Red ships!” Benny looked delighted with himself. “Tell him. Tell him, Willie.”

“Red ships?”

“What?” Kowalski suddenly stilled, staring at Willie. “What did you say?”

Benny sat on the desk, looked at Ray and Willie intently. “Please. Can you both... repeat after me?”

“Okay...” Ray, dubious.

“Yeah, sure,” Willie, eager.

“Carefully, I mean. Please, get this right?”

“Yeah, yeah, Benny, we're not stupid. Just tell us what you want to say...”

Didn't make much sense, what he said, but what the hell...

Carefully they repeated after Benny:

“'There are red ships, and green ships, but no ships like...'”

“'Partnership,'” Kowalski joined in on the last word. His whole body went loose, and he flopped himself over his knees for a moment. “Shit.” He sat back up, knuckled his fists into his eyes, and groaned. “He's really here.”

“Yes. And I love you. Ray,” Benny ordered, peremptorily, “tell him I love him.”

“You tell him you love him, he's your boyfriend!”

“Ray,” Willie said, grabbing the blond man by the hand. “He loves you.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know. But it's me, ain't it?”

“What's you?” Fraser was kneeling next to Kowalski now, concern radiating from his blue eyes. 

“I musta... not loved him enough. 'Cause you guys can see him, and I can't.”

“That's nonsense,” Benny shook his head, authoritatively. “I'm sure that the reason you can't see me is simply because...”

Whumph. Benny was gone.

Kowalski looked up. His face was shiny with tears, and strangely young. “Did someone slam a door?”

Awh, Jeez. Poor guy.

“Come here,” Ray grabbed his other hand, and pulled him back up to his feet. Put an arm around his shoulder. “We'll just go, you know, for a walk. Get some air.”

Willie nodded, opened the door. Stood back, let Dief through first. 

“You know, it'll be all right, Ray,” the kid said, to Kowalski. “I mean, I don't know how I know, but I do know. He's gonna find a way to talk to you.”

“Ya think?”

“Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure.”  


... …

Okay. He didn't care what the captain said. He wasn't a racist. But he was sure glad he'd tailed Lambert. Not that he was obsessed or anything.

Still, it made him furious. He'd gone to the Captain with legitimate concerns, and she just slapped him down. Willie was the teacher's pet, wasn't he? And what about him, Simon Nutall? One time, after they were first paired up together, Willie had introduced him to a witness as Peter Nutall, by accident, and he hadn't corrected him. Woman had been calling him Peter for the rest of the interview. At least Lambert had the good grace to look ashamed when he realised what he'd done. But still... why hadn't he corrected him in the first place? What the hell was wrong with him? He was just... He huffed a laugh. Yeah, Nutall was nothing. Never had been. Might as well be invisible. Captain never saw him. Lambert never saw him. He was just some skinny spotty guy everyone overlooked. 

God, he hated Lambert. Hated him.

And yeah, who'd have fucking thought it? There he was, with that... spic, or wop, or whatever she was. Well, whatever she was, she shoulda known better. It gave Nutall the shudders, to see her kiss the... Hey, he wasn't racist. But he could think the word, couldn't he?

Well, Lambert might think he could get away with that crap, but the stupid bastard had picked the wrong guy to mess with. One thing Simon Nutall was sure of, he wasn't a fucking idiot, no matter how many times Lambert laughed at him behind his hand. And he'd just proved it. Just seen what the guy was like, on his own time. Because, not only was he all over the stupid bitch like a rash, everything about him was different. He walked looser, smiled a lot, laughed from his stomach. Yeah, right. Nutall had always thought the prick was taking the piss. Nobody could talk that much like a...Klingon? Vulcan? What did the guys call him? Nobody could talk that much like an alien freak and live. So, fuck it, Lambert had been laughing at them all the whole time. 

And getting his end away with white trash. Though, she was high class trash, from what he could see. He sat at a distance from the Starlight, looking through the long lens. Just marvellous... He watched, bitterly, through the wide windows. There they were, the two of them, after their posh dinner, dancing. And yeah, they could dance. He wasn't the only one watching them. Halfway through the evening one of those fancy ass waltzy tango tunes must have come on, though he couldn't hear it. Gradually the dance floor cleared as Lambert and his floozy spun, as smooth as skaters gliding on the ice. And Lambert was in denim and leather, (didn't these places have a dress code, or did they just let him in 'cause he looked good?) and she was in a cloud of grey, and they looked like...

Fuck. Lambert just had to be good at everything, didn't he?

Nutall crossed his legs and ignored his erection. So, she was sexy. For white trash. He couldn't help it if she turned him on. It's not like he was looking at Lambert. He wasn't a fag, after all.

By morning he was feeling rather better, eating Danish, and drinking coffee. He couldn't stand the stuff, but being a cop he was coming to rely on it. At least it woke him up. As he had suspected, Lambert had headed off to visit Vecchio. (And the girl was still sleeping over at his place. He might check and see what was going on there later.) Lambert was looking pleased with himself, as well he might. But it was a bit weird, because he seemed, occasionally, to be talking to his feet. Nutall perked up. He'd heard some rumour about Lambert's mother. Apparently there had been an incident a while back... he'd have to check into it. He heard the woman was at the funny farm.

And now, here was Lambert, and Vecchio, and some other scruffy white guy, who looked like he might be homeless or something, walking down the road. The scruffy guy was shaking his head and talking fast (fuck, he was too far away to hear what they were saying) Vecchio had his arm over his shoulder, and Lambert was doing this thing with his hand. Shit. He had his hand on the guy's back, rubbing a circle between his shoulders...

Nutall jerked. He was tired, had to be. He'd just imagined Lambert's hand on his own back, rubbing warmth and comfort into it. He blushed, shook his head angry. Damned coffee. Made you twitchy.

Okay, so, from the looks of it, they were taking the scruffy guy for a walk. Vecchio was making scraping gestures with his hand, patted the guy's face. Maybe taking him for a shave. Yeah, good. See, Lambert wasn't the only guy who could do some detecting. Nutall was good at his job, by anyone else's standards. Just, they kept pairing him up with Lambert, and Lambert was a... force of fucking nature. Even before he turned into a sniffer dog. So... He took a breath, and stepped out of his car. Sauntered across the road as though he owned it. Nobody noticed a thing. Well, why would they?

Within ten minutes he was in Vecchio's office (because whatever Lambert thought, he wasn't a fucking fool, and could pick a lock with the best of them.) And then he was sitting with the Benton Fraser folder open, riffling through the papers, hungry for facts.

Oh, yeah. He nodded, and smiled to himself. He was right all along. Lambert was helping work the case. And okay, like the Captain said, there was no reason why he shouldn't do this on his free time, but even so... Damned Canadian dies in Canada, a Chicago cop should be policing Chicago. 

Though, it seemed, as he continued to read, that there might be a Chicago connection after all. Huh, he remembered that woman, and the boyfriend. He'd have felt sorry for the do-gooding Canadian, getting himself killed for nothing, but it was his own fault, after all. Looking after everybody and everything. He should have known better. 

For a moment Nutall pictured himself finding the critical clue that solved the case. Imagined Lambert actually seeing him, for once, actually looking at him, for fuck's sake. Being grateful.

Nah. That kind of thing only happened in stories. Nutall huffed a laugh to himself, privately. Christ, he was fucked up. Hated, fucking hated Lambert. What the hell was he even doing ? Damned well stalking the guy now. 

So, he pulled himself back together. Lambert was on this case. Now all Nutall needed was to figure out a way to use it. For him, against him. Something.

Get himself seen.  


... …

I hate this. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it.

Every time I try to reach out to him, every time I try to reach out to Ray, I'm snatched away. By time, or night, or distance. Either he can't hear me, or I can't see him. I was with him, kneeling right next to him, and he... he was nearly hearing me, I was nearly touching him, and we were close, so close.

Oh God. We were nearly touching. I love Willie, I love my first Ray, my brother, my dearest friend. But, oh. Oh, but... If I could choose anyone to see me, to hear...

My own Ray, my dear, my Kowalski. Smith, his name means. My smith, my finger and tongue smith, bright word smith, no matter how foolish he feels in his verbiage. Laughter flies from him in sparks, he beats brightness out of the dark. The things that man can do... Could do. Before I broke his heart.

Oh. Ray.

And just now, just this very moment, I could feel his breath. Feel it. Breath, light as a feather's shadow, but real nonetheless. I could feel him... and he, I'm sure, could feel me.

We were nearly there, nearly through... and then...

He vanished. It all vanished. Or I vanished.

Where the hell am I this time? 

And the word hell is worse here than it ever was in life. Oh, I remember. People using it, as a casual curse, never once thinking, never once fearing...

I remember my father, standing with me in a burning house: 'Is this my final posting?' And at the time, I thought it was a light comment. Almost a joke, though it was no time for joking. I had no idea, then, how thin the line burns, between heaven and hell.

Right now, I walk on the razor's edge. Purgatory is a blade. My feet are bleeding, but I can't stop walking. Somehow, somehow, I have to walk to him. Somehow, I have to find my way.

Because there are worse postings than the final burning. There could be a forever without him. Without Ray. A forever in the dark.

I remember again, my father's voice. Fathers and sons. I never listened. Why did I always heed his warnings too late? Why did he always tell me, too late?

“You should have gone into the light.”

No. I couldn't. I can't.

There will be no light, forever. No light, if I do not find my Ray.  


... ...

There was a banging at the door. Angelica smiled. Willie must have got back, from whatever it was. 

“Coming, honey,” she called, wrapping a towel around her hair. Shame, if he'd got back half an hour earlier they could have showered together. 

It was only as she was opening the door that the thought hit her.

Why would Willie knock on the door to his own apartment?  


... …

“Hi.” Nutall leaned casually against the door frame, and stared at her appreciatively. “You must be Willie's girlfriend.”

“Hm.” The woman was trying to push the door as far shut as possible, but he'd already done his cop thing, and edged in as far as he could. It would take a forklift to move him now. “Okay,” she said, trying to sound casual, but obviously wary. “So, you must be... I have no idea. Who are you?”

“Oh,” Nutall stuck his hand out. “I'm Peter,” he said, hiding the bitterness in his voice. “Lambert,” he added, pronouncing it the French way, 'Lohmbear'. School French hadn't been a total waste of time after all. “I know Willie from work.”

The woman put her hand out, with a dubious expression on her face. “So, you're a cop?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He grabbed her fingers, and squeezed. “You wanna see my badge?” Okay, so it came out sounding sleazy. Not his fault. And, actually, he didn't want her to see his badge anyway, because she'd realise he'd given the wrong name.

“No,” she said pulling her hand from his grasp. “I just want to get on with my day. Nice to see you, though. I'll tell Willie you called.”

“Peter. Call me Peter.”

“Okay, Peter, I'll tell him you called.”

Bitch, he thought. Thinks she's too good for me, but she'll throw herself at that black bastard.

“Listen,” he said, sliding his foot further into the hall. “I gotta talk to him about a case.”

“I'm sure you can talk to him about it later when...”

“It's about the Mountie.”

The woman froze. “Oh,” she said, in a little-girl-voice. “You're helping him find out what happened to Benny?”

Like that, was it? Benny. What was he, her uncle? “Yeah. Benny. Got a lead on it.” He relaxed a little. She had stepped back and let him through the door, without even thinking about it. 

“What's the lead?”

“Well, can I have a cup of tea?” He smiled at her, apologetically. “You should see the muck coffee they serve at the station.”

“Yeah. I can do you a cup of tea.” She had let her guard down completely, turned to walk to the kitchen. “Sugar?”

“Yes, honey?” He replied, flirtatiously, as though responding to a pet name. She didn't give any fucking sign, completely oblivious. He gritted his teeth. He bet she laughed at all Lambert's jokes.

“One or two?”

“One.”

“So, what's the lead?”

“Well,” he might as well rattle on. “It seems that... 'Benny' was protecting someone from Chicago, some woman who kept getting in trouble with the law...”

“Yeah. He was like that. Always looking out for people. Giving 'em second chances. That's how he met Willie...”

“Yeah?” Casually Nutall wandered around the living room, looking at Willie's CD library, his books.

Hey, fuck me, he thought, and scowled. History, math, fucking modern linguistics... Lambert really did read all that shit. He hefted an ugly paper back in his hand. What the fuck was an Etruscan? Damn. It annoyed the hell out of him, but he had to know... He flicked through the notes and index. Well, apparently the last person to speak Etruscan was some dead Roman dude. Claudius... Who gave a rat's fuck? What the hell... Urgulanilla? That was one ass ugly name. 

Maybe Willie only had the book there for show...

“Hey, you've seen his collection.” Lambert's girl had come back into the room, taken the towel off her head. Damn. She'd got properly dressed. Jeans and baggy sweat top. Probably one of Willie's. It went all the way down to her mid thighs. She might as well be wearing a skirt. It was like she was going for anti-sexy. But, her hair was long, mussy and gorgeous, still damp and almost black. She was smiling at the book. “He read something about how the Etruscans were in Italy before the Romans, and then we had this big thing about how a lot of Italian culture was probably Etruscan, but we didn't know it anymore.”

“Does he do that a lot?”

“What? Find out something, and bore us all to tears while he researches it all the way back to Adam and Eve? Yeah.”

“Huh. Good quality in a detective.”

“Yeah, I can imagine.”

“Might be a bit annoying in a boyfriend.”

She stiffened a little, gave him an offended look. “Actually, it's something I really love about him.”

“Yeah, yeah. Me too.” He flushed to the roots of his hair. He didn't mean that the way it sounded... “I mean, the department does. He's good, really good at what he does.”

“Yeah? He doesn't talk about it a lot.”

Great, Nutall thought. So, apparently he's modest. Or plays it, for his girl. He brushed off his irritation. “Well, he should. Talk about it I mean. Did he tell you what happened yesterday?”

“Said a girl went missing, but she was found safe.”

Bastard. If it had been him, he'd have been drinking out on that story for months.

“He was the one who found her. He not tell you that?”

“No.” She looked at him, eyes smiling. “No. He didn't tell me that.”

Damn. She was pretty beautiful with those smiling shiny eyes, but she wasn't smiling for him. She was smiling about Willie. Nobody had ever smiled at him, or for him, like that.

Nutall covered his feelings with a casual laugh. “Yeah. The mother told him that her daughter wore lavender, and your guy... you know, he literally sniffed the kid out? I mean, honest to God. I swear on my mother's grave.” Not that his mother was dead, but it was a good expression, and it might throw her later. He'd already given her the wrong name. “He got down on his hands and knees, sniffed the ground, and tracked her down.”

“Oh.” The girl looked a bit bewildered for a moment, scratched her chin. “Weird.”

“Why weird? You not heard of him doing something like that before?”

“No. Not Willie. I mean... Benny used to do it. All the time. Tracking down suspects... used to drive my uncle up the wall. But... not Willie.” She flashed a smile, sudden and bright. “Unless he's been holding out on me. I mean, he didn't tell me he'd found the kid.”

“Yeah, well, he's a modest kind of hero, your guy,” he said, burying his sourness. 

“He is,” she agreed, blushing.

Nutall smiled at her, feeling it seethe up inside of him. He hated Lambert. Hated his woman, standing there in his god-damned sweats. “Maybe,” he said, slyly, “he got good at licking stuff some other way. What do you think?”

“Excuse me?” 

Fuck it. Fuck her. It's not like she wasn't asking for it. She did open the door to him, after all. In her nightgown, all pink and damp from the shower. And she was fucking Lambert, so why not him? 

She squeaked as he grabbed her, at first more surprised than anything. He watched himself push her up against the wall, thinking, 'what the hell, what am I doing...' but then she started struggling, and he was back in the moment fighting back. She was a good fighter, even managed to get a few good kicks in, pretty damn useless in the bare feet. But yeah, fucking excellent. Fight. He started to stiffen, a little bit. Not all the way hard, but he was getting there. Bitch let out a scream, and bit him.

Good. Oh, fuck, that was good. He'd thought of fighting Lambert before, dreamt about it even, the guy made him so fucking angry, but this was good. This was good too. And he had the advantage here. He knew how to subdue a suspect. He swung her to the floor, face down, put his arm around her throat, and squeezed. She struggled against the choke hold, and it was just like the Instructor said at the Academy. She struggled like a perp. The worst thing they could do. The more she struggled the more he relaxed into it, still squeezing. The air went out of her. He laid her flat on her face, and knelt over her, waiting, for just a moment, before he pulled down her pants. 

What the hell was he doing? He could lose his job over this, go to prison...

She didn't know who he was, he reminded himself. Thought he had a dead mother. If he was careful, if he was quick, he could get out of here and leave no trace. His mind flicked over all the places his hands had been, figured out what he'd need to wipe. He'd have to clean her mouth out... Or, yeah... there was bound to be meat in the fridge. There was still the option of making her eat that... the animal dna always messed up forensics. Yeah, he could do it. And she need never see him again, because he wouldn't work this case. He could say he felt too close to it, because it involved his partner. He smiled. And if she ever did see him again, down the line, they could just pass it off as post traumatic stress...

Condom, he thought. I need a condom... 

He shoved his hands into his wallet, pulled out a little square. He didn't use them often, but it was always worth having them around, just in case. This was a good 'just in case.' He didn't even have to pay for it, or buy the bitch dinner and drinks. Okay, he'd never do this kind of thing again, but this was...

She moaned, and he belted her, back of his hand. She went quiet. Quickly, fingers fumbling, he tore the little square open, sorted himself out. Thought of Willie kneeling over her. Did Willie play rough? Had he done her like Nutall was going to do her?

He imagined Lambert's dick pushing in where he was going to push, and finally went all the way hard. The condom rolled slickly over him and he positioned himself over her, ready to get down to business. The woman groaned on the floor, and Nutall grabbed her by the hair, thinking of Lambert and this bitch sliding across the dance floor.

Well, if Lambert could dance, he could dance.

He was going to enjoy this. He was going to take his sweet fucking time.  


… ...

They were sitting talking crap at the barber's when Dief went suddenly insane.

“What? What the hell is it now?” Vecchio was obviously exhausted. Willie felt guilty about it, but... they'd just had a hell of a time with Kowalski, and he couldn't look after everybody, could he?

“Is Ben back?” Kowalski was looking hopeful. Fortunately the barber didn't speak enough English to realise the three guys who'd just walked in off the street were certifiable. 

“No... just, Dief...”

“What, you gonna tell me Dief's haunting us as well?” Kowalski was covered in suds, the barber's fingers in his hair, yet, despite everything, completely dispassionate. Punch drunk, like the poor sod had taken one hit too many, and just couldn't take any more. Like, maybe God had been taking the piss.

“Er, technically, I think he's haunting me,” Willie said, apologetically, “but yeah... Dief says hello.”

“Hi, Dief.” Kowalski waved vaguely, at the wrong spot of air.

Ray Vecchio was staring at Dief, forehead furrowed. “Looks like he's going to spew up a gut, he's barking so hard. You'd better go see what he wants, Willie.”

“Yeah. Well, last time, he led me to you guys, so now I'm stuck at an Italian barber's, listening to crap opera.”

“Seriously. You need to see what's got him so riled up.”

“Yeah, yeah. Okay, I'll speak to you guys later.” Willie put his hand on Kowalski's arm, and squeezed. “Look after yourself Ray.”

“If he doesn't,” Vecchio said, wearily, “I'll beat him to the ground, and tie him up. That'll make him look after himself.”

“You're a kind and caring man, zio Ray,” Willie said, “and I'm glad you're on my side.”

“Yeah, great. Now, fuck off. I'll see you after work.”

Willie nodded, gave the two men the thumbs up, and started off, jogging after Dief.

Seemed like the mutt was in a hurry. The further they went the faster he ran and...

Hey, hang on. They were running back to Willie's place.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

Willie pushed himself to top speed, and then some. He was a good runner, always had been, even before the first day Fraser ran him into the ground. He had to be. A kid had to run, if he knew what was good for him. But shit... Willie had no idea he could run so damned fast.

When he got to the front door, it was still slightly open, and it swung back, with a rush. Didn't even feel as though he'd touched it.

And then he was in the living room, and there was...

There was...

Angelica, on the floor, and Nutall, with his fists in her hair, and she had her legs wrapped tight around each other, clenched at the knees, knotted at the ankle, and Nutall was calling her a bitch, a bitch and a whore, and telling her to give it and...

Nutall was up, his throat in the clench of Willie's grasp, as he strangled, crushed, crushing, and there were feet scrabbling in the empty air, and he was swinging him, up, back, slamming the whole hated body against the wall, again and again. Nutall's hands were grabbing his wrist, scrabbling, and his face was going purple, and Angie was behind him, crying, talking Italian.

“Put him down, put him down, Willie, he's not worth it. He didn't... he didn't... he tried, but he didn't...”

Willie felt the whole world passing through him. The room, the light through the windows, children playing in the street, the neighbours arguing on the floor beneath. Nutall's pulse through his hand, and the fierce knowledge that all he had to do was squeeze a little... just a little...

“Don't. Son, don't.” Willie closed his eyes. Fraser. Tears burned behind his lids. “Son, put him down. 'Revenge is a wild kind of justice...”

“'which...” his voice drifted like smoke, “'the more man's nature runs to, the more aught law to weed it out.'”

“Good lad.” Fraser sounded approving. The father Willie had never had. 

“You don't understand. He tried to...”

“Because he behaved like a monster, must you do likewise?”

Willie released his hand, and Nutall fell to the ground, toppled to his side, clutching his throat. Angie came up close, hugged. He turned, desperately, burying his face into her throat. Warm hair. Wrapped both arms round her, squeezed tight. Oh, Jesus, God almighty, she smelled so beautiful, she felt so good. Even sweaty, even terrified. She was just... home. Sweetness, love, security... everything. Everything he had ever wanted, cleaved to... Oh, God. Angelica. 

And that... that bastard... he'd tried to lay his hands on her...

Nutall started mouthing something. His voice sounded cracked. Willie felt himself go corpse-cold. All the blood dropped out of him, and he fell to his knees, putting his body between Nutall and Angie. He leaned up close to the man's face. 

“You don't know me, Nutall,” he whispered, mouth pressed right into the enemy's ear. “You haven't got a clue what I'm capable of. You come anywhere near anyone I love, ever again, and I will kill you. Understand? I'm not fucking around. You're lucky Angie's here. I'm gonna do it by the book, for her. Call the cops. And you might think you're in trouble. You might think you're in a world of fucking trouble. But believe me,” shit, he was laughing, “believe me, you're one lucky fucking bastard.” He sucked in a breath, went colder, cold, as cold as hell. “You got that? Because, I swear to God. I will kill you. You don't believe me? Look at my juvie record. Look at my family.” Ice. Crawling right over his skin. He invoked it. For the first time, ever, he invoked it. “My Dad,” he hissed, and fought the urge to puke. “See what he's in for. You take a good look at who I come from. And then, yeah... then, you bastard,” he laughed, suddenly giddy, like a fucking druggy. “Yeah, then. See if you want to come at me again.”

He straightened, stood up, and kicked Nutall hard, in the nuts. Really hard. There was a wet crunch, a bright pain blossomed over the toes and arch of Willie's foot, and Nutall went white. Puked, out of his mouth and nostrils.

Willie turned, and started to shake. Angie was standing, paper pale, looking at him like he scared her. 

Oh, fuck. What had she heard? He heard a noise coming out of him, and swallowed it. Swallowed it again. Someone was keening.

“Hospital,” he managed. “Phone the hospital. Think... I think he's bleeding in his larynx. And... er... maybe into his... his scrotum.” He sucked in breath. Felt dizzy. Couldn't bring himself to say it. “And, you need to... you need to...” Shit. He was crying.

“He didn't hurt me.”

“Yeah. He didn't rape you,” he said, blankly. “I get that. But...”

“But what?”

Willie remembered his mother, his sister, bad boyfriends. Felt dizzy, and was suddenly on the floor. Angie was next to him, holding his arms. “Willie, please...”

“He hurt you.” He reached out his fingers, touched her neck, already bruised. Oh, God. Purple. Her beautiful skin. He blinked, and water rolled down his face. “Sweet Jesus.” He held her hands, looked at her fingers. Kissed the tips. “Angie,” his voice said, a million miles away. “He hurt you.”

Angie knelt and held him, and oh, fuck, what the hell was going on? He groaned into her embrace, and she held him while he shook.

Why was she the one comforting him?  



	4. In Dreams Begin Responsibilities

He stared in the mirror, and rubbed his face appreciatively. It felt weird, smooth and fresh. Clean. He felt clean.

“Hey, thanks Vecchio, I look kinda human again,” he said. 

“Again? Who says you ever been human,” Vecchio replied, and Ray smirked. He'd have been worried if everyone kept trying to be nice to him. If Vecchio was back to doing his world's biggest asshole act, then he couldn't be too badly off.

“So how much do I owe you?”

“Nothing,” Vecchio said, then waved off his protest. “You can buy lunch. Thought we should talk over the case while the notes are still fresh in your head. How's that?”

“Yeah, that's good.”

Over lunch he and Vecchio knocked ideas around... and he musta been really hungry, because he could actually taste the food for once. Who knew a greasy cheeseburger could taste that good? “I don't suppose Ben's around, is he?” He couldn't help it, he sounded wistful. 

“No.” Vecchio looked a little bit pissed about that. “Maybe helping Willie on a case, or bumbling around in the afterlife doing whatever it is they do...”

“Okay. So, what we've got is, this woman's running, Benny's standing in front of her, guy shoots, he doesn't see who it is, but we reckon it's her boyfriend. Jack Whitefield. So, what I don't understand is why the RCMP haven't put this together yet. I mean, there were prints on the gun, yeah?”

“Well, there were prints. Not on the gun, but on the bullets.”

“Yeah, that's right, yeah.” Ray laughed. “Perps always forget to wipe the bullets.”

“Yeah. And the tops of light switches.”

“And toilet lids.”

“Hey, I'm eating!”

“Jeez, Vecchio,” he snorted into his coffee, “who knew you were so damned squeamish?”

Vecchio glowered at him, almost like he meant it, then continued. “So, we're agreed, perps are dumb.”

“D, U, M, dumb,” Ray agreed. “So are the cops, unfortunately.”

“Yeah, cause it seems like the RCMP are stalled, and the bastards aren't talking to me.”

“They give you any reason?”

“Just, 'we assure you that the matter is receiving our fullest attention, and thank you kindly for your interest...'”

“Fucking numb-nuts,” Ray stabbed his fries, then dropped the fork with a frustrated clatter. “Did they at least check the damned fingerprints against Chicago? 'Cause they'll never get a Canadian hit on the thing.”

“They've not told me anything,” Vecchio admitted. “Willie's gonna look into it at work today.”

“Well, if the prints comes through and it is our guy then Canada are gonna have to get their asses over here and do it properly.”

“I don't care what they do, so long as the guy gets arrested.”

“Huh.” Ray brought his hands up to his face, covered it, palms flat on either side of his nose, heels to his chin, finger tips to his hair line. He let out a sudden laugh that felt like a groan. “'I returned to Chicago on the trail of the killer of my husband, and for reasons which don't need exploring at this juncture...'” he trailed off.

A soft hand settled on his shoulder, and he uncovered his face. Vecchio was looking at him compassionately, massaging his shoulder. “You'll be all right, Ray,” he said gently. “Benny had great taste. He wouldn'ta gone for you if you weren't strong.”

Ray nodded, stared at his fries. He didn't want to be strong. It felt like he was betraying Ben by carrying on. His appetite had gone.

“You reckon you might stay? Once this thing is over?”

“I dunno.” He started shuffling fries around his plate, watching them get covered in ketchup. Blood. He looked away from the food, suddenly sickened. “I mean, Canada was home, but I don't know what it is now. I mean, now that Ben's not there.”

“You know you can always...” Vecchio sighed. “I mean, if you do stay here. You're family. I gotta admit it, I'd not hate it if you stayed.”

“Thanks.” Tears prickled at the corners of his eyes, but he was all wept out. Besides. He was sitting in a diner with another guy's hand on his shoulder. And if he started crying, Vecchio would come over all Italian, and hug him, and that would just look wrong. Not that he cared how it looked... that wasn't it. What was it? It was... The Vecchios had hugged the stuffing out of him, and he didn't think he could stand another Italian hug. Not even from Vecchio... Ray. His whole body was still hungry for a Ben hug, he was starving for it. But that was never going to happen again. “We'll see,” he managed to speak. “I mean, we'll see what happens when we've got Ben's killer.”

“Don't,” Vecchio looked at him intently. “Don't go killing the bastard, okay?”

“I wasn't thinking of it,” he lied.

“'Cause I already lost one brother, I don't wanna have to visit you in prison.”

“I just said, I wasn't thinking of it.”

Vecchio snorted. “Bullshit,” he said. “If I was thinking of it, so were you.”

“You were?”

“Yeah.” Vecchio removed his hand, sat back in his chair, and folded his arms across his chest, defensively. “But Benny'd hate that. And Ma would kill me.”

“That'd be one murder too many,” Ray said, “though, God knows you give her reason enough, with the dumb stunts you pull.”

“Hey, what do you know about my dumb stunts?”

Ray laughed. “I hear stuff. We're family, remember?”

“Frannie,” Vecchio groaned. 

“Yeah, well. She worries about you.”

“I'm just doing my job...”

“Yeah, whatever.” Vecchio had been well and truly Frasered, that was the truth. On a semi regular basis he and Ben would get a letter from Chicago, recounting his latest exploits, with maybe a newspaper article. Frannie seemed torn between pride in her madcap brother, and alarm that he was going to kill himself if he didn't slow down. Yeah, Fraser was a hard act to live up to. They all felt it. He did, Vecchio did, Willie did. “Just, don't get yourself killed, that's all I'm asking.”

“I won't.”

“Ben said the same thing.”

“I'm not, you know, suicidal or anything. Just, I get the bad guy...”

“So I hear.”

“And we're gonna get this guy.”

“Yeah.” Ray smiled at Vecchio, raised his coffee in salute. “Yeah, we are.”  


… ...

It was the kind of bad news that was so damned whacked out and crazy it seemed almost like a practical joke. Anything would be preferable to it actually being true. By the time Gwen Murphy had made it to the hospital it was starting to sink in though. She put her Captain persona on as armour, and let the doctor lead her to the side room where Willie was waiting, unusually scruffy in his T-shirt and jeans. He was leaning over his knees, face entirely covered by his long fingered hands. She was about to speak when he spoke first.

“Yeah, Fraser, that doesn't help.”

Something cold crept over her, and she paused by the door, not saying a word.

“Okay, okay. I know I got there on time. But, fuck's sake...” he sucked in a breath. “What if I hadn't?” Silence, and what sounded halfway between a laugh, and a choke. “I know, I coulda killed him. That woulda been worse.” Another pause, as though listening to another speaker. “I can't believe I didn't... how the hell didn't I see it? Can you tell me that? How didn't I see it?”

Her heart went out to him, at the same time as her blood ran cold. He had passed every physical, finished his academics with flying colours, and his psych tests had been irreproachable, even with his family history. But...

Psych tests had been wrong before. They'd been wrong about Nutall after all, although, apparently, he had been pretty borderline. Willie, on the other hand, was clever. Very very clever. Maybe he had just fooled the testers, with the same aplomb with which he did everything else. He was, after all, sitting here talking to a dead man.

She raised her hand, and tapped on the door. Willie sat up with a sudden jerk, as though he'd been electrocuted, saw her, and stood. Hands behind his back, as though he was on parade.

“Sir.”

“Don't 'Sir' me,” she said, and sighed. “Just for today, it's Gwen. Sit down, Willie.”

Willie sat.

“How are you doing?”

“Okay,” he said, and the smoothness with which he delivered the lie was almost as chilling as having seen him talking to his... what? His ghost. 

She sighed. Best be straight with him. “You don't sound okay,” she said. “If you were okay, you wouldn't be sitting there talking to Corporal Fraser.”

Willie's face tensed. Then he shrugged, mock casual. “I find it helps to think aloud, sometimes,” he said. “He was a big part of my life. Sometimes talking to him helps. I'm not delusional.” There was a flinch at the corner of his mouth, something like an abortive smile. “I do know that he's dead.”

“Okay,” she looked at him closely, but he seemed sensible enough. “Okay. I'll buy that. But I want you to see the department shrink.” She waited a moment, for him to start arguing. Most cops argued, at least the first time. He just nodded, ever the pragmatist. He must have been expecting it, after all, after an incident like this, even if his captain hadn't just discovered him talking to thin air.

“Yes, Sir.”

“Gwen,” she said, frustrated.

“Yes, Gwen.” He looked painfully uncomfortable at the use of her first name, and she began to relax. Yes, he was still Willie.

“Okay. Now, let me know.” She spoke as gently as she was able. “How's your girl?”

His lips tightened again. “She's not a girl, she's a woman, and she's not mine, she's all her own.”

Good God, she thought, here I am, trying to be motherly and I end up getting a pc lecture on not using sexist language, from a kid. Before she could say anything, Willie shook his head, and looked apologetic. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I know you didn't mean anything... it's just... Vecchio women.” He laughed, his face opening up for a moment. “Whole new species of awesome. You've got to meet them sometime.”

“Well, I probably will,” she said, sadly. “I'm going to have to take some statements. I just wanted you to know. I thought I should handle it, rather than... you know. Some of the guys, they can gossip. And I figured you've got enough on your plate without having to worry about that.” She cleared her throat. “So, you reckon you can talk about it?”

“It?”

“I'm going to have to take your statement.”

“Ah.” His body went still, and it was only then that she realised he'd relaxed his guard for a minute there, talking about the Vecchio women. For a while she'd caught a glimpse of real Willie, not cop Willie. Not even street punk Willie, the persona he'd adopted as a child. She watched, fascinated, as the mask went back on. All cops had one, a face they hid behind, but she'd rarely seen one as flawless as his. “Yes, Sir... Gwen,” he said. “I can do that.”

“Okay,” she sighed, and took out her notebook. “So, let's start at the beginning. You came home, and...?”

“And the front door was open...” His voice was flat and toneless as he described events. She wrote rapidly in her scruffy shorthand, and resisted the urge to hug him. 

Poor kid, she thought, remembering him giving a similar statement before. She'd been watching through the two way mirror while he spoke to a social worker. He'd been ten. His mother had been twenty eight. He hadn't been strong enough to stop the guy. She wondered how well he remembered it. He'd been in shock at the time. 

Well, this time, at least, he had no physical injuries to show for it.  


... …

Kowalski was on the phone to Canada when Ray's cellphone rang. Ma, he thought, and rolled his eyes. Probably wanting him to buy eggplant or something...

It wasn't eggplant.

“Jesus,” he said, voice flat as road kill, “Jesus Christ.”

Kowalski looked at him, raised his eyebrows, and wrapped up his phone call. “What,” he mouthed at him. Ray shut off his phone, fingers shaking.

“Angelica...” he whispered. Kowalski's face went white. 

“Angie?” 

“Yeah...”

“What happened?” 

Shit, Ray realised, poor guy probably thinks it's even worse than it is. That she's dead in a car crash or something...

“She was, er... she was attacked. Assaulted.” He put his hand up in a stop gesture before Kowalski could go off at the mouth. “Willie got there in time. They've got the guy in custody. And, he didn't, you know, he didn't...”

“Okay.”

“It was a cop,” Ray said, incredulous. “Can you believe that? A fucking cop.”

“Holy shit.”

“They're up at the hospital, I'd better get going. Uhm... I'll wait with the women for Angie, you get Willie?”

“Yeah.”

“Cause, from what I hear, he needs somebody right now.”

“Why not you?”

“'Cause he asked for you,” Ray glared at him. “Uncle Knuckles. You were always his go-to-guy when he got in a fight, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah... I sorta didn't think he'd remember.”

Ray stood, started fumbling round for his car keys. “'Course he'd remember that. You taught him to fight, remember? Box and all that.” He laughed then. “Got him dancing too, as I recall.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Kowalski was passing his hands distractedly through his freshly cut hair. “Okay. We'll go get him.”

There. Finally. He'd got the car keys. 

As they passed through outer reception it flitted through his mind, irrelevantly, that Gloria had called in sick again this morning. Probably hadn't done a lick of work since he took off to Benny's funeral. He was going to have to fire her...

Damn. Too much to do, no time.

“If I get my hands on the bastard who hurt Angie, I'm gonna kill him,” he muttered. Kowalski nodded.

“Don't do that, Ray,” Benny popped up beside him. “Please. He's in custody.” He paused for a beat. “Well, he's in hospital, but I assure you, he isn't going anywhere...”

Ray gave his dead friend a glance, but said nothing. He didn't want to freak Kowalski out.

Fuck, his hands were shaking...

“Hey, you drive for me,” he said, tossing the keys to Kowalski. “Just...” he tried, and failed, to laugh. “Try not to blow this one up, okay?”  


... …

Kid looked beat. Ray knew better than to ask him how he was feeling, 'cause, what was he meant to say? 'Yeah, I'm fine, guy I work with tried to rape my girlfriend, I'm cool though.' 'Yeah, the guy I love more than life just died, but I'm fine about that...' Christ, words were so fucking useless sometimes.

“Hey, Willie. Come on. She's being Ma Vecchio'd, she's in good hands.”

“I gotta wait, they'll be finished soon.” Finished with the rape kit, he didn't say. Ray winced. Because even though, from what Vecchio had said, the bastard hadn't got anywhere, the kit had to be done properly. 

“Get something to eat.” He couldn't exactly boss Willie about. They'd never had that kind of relationship, even before the kid got taller than him. But he could make the suggestion. “There's bound to be something to eat in this dump. You'll be what, five minutes away. They'll call us the second you can see her.”

“'Kay.” The kid stood, looming awkwardly in the tiny room, and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Can we, er...” He looked embarrassed. “Can we go down the backstairs?”

“Yeah. Yeah, we can do that.” Ray had spotted the police men in the corridor. He figured Willie wouldn't want to run the risk of bumping into colleagues right now.

As he suspected, Willie didn't eat anything. He pushed baked beans around his plate, idly staring into space. Ray waited for him to speak... or not speak. Whatever he needed.

Eventually Willie started talking.

“You know, first time I saw her, she was sitting on the swing in the Vecchio's back yard. It was kinda beat up, the swing, lower on one side than the other. And she had a baby on her lap.”

“Yeah?”

“And you know, everyone thinks, 'aw, babies, cute', but I'm one of them, I think, 'aw, baby, ick.'” Ray laughed, and was rewarded with a little smile. One day, no doubt, the kid would feel different about his own. “And this baby, well, it was really icky. I thought, at first, he was covered in jam. But it was eczma, and then I felt a bit mean. You know, cause I'd been thinking what a pug ugly baby he was. And he kept grizzling, and he was all snotty. A big brick of a kid. You know, you wouldn't look at him and think about Raphael or angels.”

Ray nodded, as though he knew what the hell Willie was on about. If Ben ever did turn up and haunt him, he was gonna have to ask him what the hell he'd done to Willie. He smiled. Nah, he knew what had happened. Willie had worshipped the ground Fraser walked on, modelled himself after him the best he could. And there were worse role models. “Go on,” he said, softly, encouraging the lad to carry on talking.

“Yeah, well. My Mom...” Willie smiled, and Ray watched him carefully. The kid didn't look sad though, talking about his mother. Just a little nostalgic. “She was fun, you know? When she was well. She was such a kid herself. And when she was good she was great. But... she was no good at mother stuff. Cooking and that kinda thing. And if I was sick she'd clear outa the house. Used to let my sister look after me. You know, for ages I thought my sister was the grown up? When I was four or five, I actually thought she might be the Mom and everyone else was only pretending.” He pulled a face, scratched his neck. “She was only three years older than me.”

“Yeah. Well, I know she loved you. I mean, I know they both did.”

“Yeah. They did. I suppose Mom still does. If she thinks of me.” Willie stared back at his plate, and furrowed his eyebrows, puzzled, as though he wasn't sure where the beans had come from, or what, exactly, they were. Ray waited, and Willie cleared his throat, started again. “So, there was Angie, and she was sitting there with this snot faced little brat on her lap, and she was singing. And, you know me, I can't sing, but I love people who can. And there she was, in her school uniform, and she wasn't cross with the baby for getting snot on her, and she wasn't shouting at him for crying. She was just pushing back and forward with her heels, singing something I couldn't understand, and the kid stopped grizzling, and she wiped the snot off him, and then she hoiked him up over her shoulder, went into the kitchen, handed him over to Maria.

“Which baby was that?”

“Vito.” Willie laughed, out of the blue, and grinned crookedly. “He's still ugly though. Don't tell Angie.”

Ray laughed. Vito was a nice kid, but he did still look sorta like a brick. “He might grow out of it.”

“Maybe. Everyone else in the family is beautiful.”

“Yeah.”

Willie stretched, and looked at the ceiling, then back at Ray. He seemed fairly calm, all things considered. “Thing about Angie,” he said, “she's strong, she's funny, she's brave, she's all those things. And nobody can touch that. I can't even touch it. I just... hold it, when she lets me. And I know she's going to be fine. She's strong, like that. But I wish I'd known what the guy was thinking. I wish I could have stopped him before he'd tried anything.”

“You couldn't have known.”

“Yeah. That's the thing. I thought, you know, when...” he looked at Ray, as though sharing a secret, and dropped his voice. “I thought when Fraser died that I'd learned something. You know, life being fragile, you never know what's going to happen next. Turns out, I hadn't learned it. Because, when something's perfect, you don't think anyone or anything can hurt it. But we're not... we're not in control.”

“No. No, we're not.” Ray took in a deep breath. “But still. We've always had those good times. They'll always be there. And you'll have good times again with Angie. You can't keep thinking about what might go wrong.”

“I know. He kept telling me that.”

“He?”

Willie looked up, suddenly apologetic. “Fraser. He was here, earlier...”

Ray felt it in his chest, a little sliver of pain, as though his heart didn't hurt enough already. Fraser was still there, but he was not there, not for him. It wasn't Willie's fault though... “Yeah, well, you know he's right. He's usually right about everything.”

Willie rubbed his face with his knuckles. “I was meant to be finding out about the fingerprints...”

“Yeah, well, the fingerprints will still be there later.”

“I know, I know... but...” His voice tailed off, and his face went distant, calculating. “I suppose I could phone Andrew...”

“Andrew?”

“In forensics. Haven't spoken to him in a bit, but he does owe me.” He pulled out his cellphone. “Give me a minute, I've gotta get reception on this thing...” 

Willie got up, and wandered out of the cafeteria, leaving his beans congealing on his plate, the toast going soggy. Ray stood, and followed him. For a moment Ben's voice flashed upon his imagination so hard he almost thought he heard it. “It only takes a moment...” He looked at the messy table, sighed, and started to tidy up the plates onto a tray, carried the tray to the corner, slid it onto the cleaner's trolley. Then hunching his shoulders up, shoving his hands into his jacket, he followed the kid. Willie was talking urgently into the phone, looked up, saw him, and flashed a quick grin, gave him the thumbs up.

Yeah. Willie was a solid kid. Angie was a solid kid. They were okay. They were going to be okay.

Maybe he was going to be too. The thought filled him with cold terror. That was the worst thing. The idea that he might be okay after all. That he might actually survive this. His heart rebelled against it. He shouldn't survive. He shouldn't even be contemplating life in a Benless world.

He leaned against the wall, watching Willie wrap up his call. Ben, he thought, and closed his eyes, despairing. Why the hell can't I see you?  


... …

It's fractured. As though there was a painting on glass, but somebody dropped it, and it's broken into pieces. Big pieces, little pieces. Pieces so fractionally tiny that they're practically powder. There should be a shape to life, I think, looking at the jigsaw, but it rarely works that way.

Hopeless. I can't fix it.

Ray and I, our life was a painting. He was colour in my darkness, warmth in my cold. I... I don't know what I was to him. Other than the one thing he held onto, the one thing he loved, when all other loves failed him. 

I never did know why he loved me.

Loves me. He loves me still. And... I don't need to know why. Just the fact of his love. 

He needs me. But Willie needs me too. And I don't know where to be.

It's fractured. I'm standing with Willie, trying to help him see things in perspective... but that's such hypocrisy because of everything I've learned, this is true: all perspective has gone. One moment I'm expostulating with him in the waiting room, hideously aware that every time I open my mouth I'm putting my foot in it, sounding more and more like a caricature of myself. Perhaps my attempts at comfort and consolation are as ridiculous to Willie as my father's were to me, when I was on the other side of the mirror. The next moment his captain walks in, and before I can think of anything to make it right, I'm with Ray, briefly... both my Rays. And as much as I love Ray Vecchio, all I want, right now, is to be with my own Ray. Even if he doesn't hear me, even if he doesn't see me. Just to be by him.

I think he hears me, sometimes. This time, I appear out of darkness just in time to see Willie leave the room, clutching his cellphone. There is Ray, staring at the messy table. I'm disappointed in Willie, though I realise I am being ridiculously unfair. The lad has enough to distract him. Still. I'd taught him to clear up after himself...

“It only takes a moment...” I start, then stop myself. Did I always sound so pious? But Ray rolls his eyes at me, literally at me, and I think for a moment he sees me. Then he's clearing the table.

“Ray,” I shout, and wave my hand right in front of him. “Ray, Ray, Ray...” He's walking to dispose of the tray, and I'm skittering alongside him, walking crabwise, jumping up and down as though... well, as though I were him. “Ray, can you see me?”

No. No, he can't. He walks to the corridor, smiles at Willie who is giving him the thumbs up, and leans against the wall. Closes his eyes. I can feel grief rising from him, in a grey miasma, like the car fumes of Chicago, smudging out the sky. I stand right next to him, move as close as I dare. I keep my eyes wide open, gather in as much of him as I can. His lashes lying against each other, their soft shadow on his face. His eyes moving slightly behind his lids. And looking down, I see his mouth, a pained narrow line, as he sucks in his lips. I move so close that my no-longer-lips are touching (or would, if they were there) his cheeks, and with all my grief, all my love, I imagine the kiss. Imagine my mouth drifting across his skin. He has shaved today. His skin would be smooth. It would smell of some cologne. He might taste soapy, but he would certainly taste of Ray.

For a moment, I feel it. Taste it. Warmth, and skin, and the tang on my tongue of his scent, of his taste... He turns his head, and I could swear he looks straight at me. “Fraser,” he says and...

I'm falling backward. And his skin is still warm on my lips, but wherever I reach, in this forever dark, there is nobody there.  


... …

The whole Vecchio clan had congregated, en masse, and even though it was a big house, it was feeling incredibly crowded. Willie was beginning to feel somewhat dazed, again. Angie gazed at him with a completely normal expression on her face, a shrug, and a 'what can you do' look, while Maria, Frannie and Ma babbled away at her, and various cousins kept inserting themselves for a hug. His Italian was normally pretty damned good - he'd spent enough time working on it after all. Right now though, there were so many words flying around that if someone had spoken to him in English his best response would be “ugh?”

Kowalski patted his shoulder, leaned down to him, and said something.

“Ugh?”

“Hey, big nose,” Kowalski called, and gestured at Vecchio. “Grab your coat.”

“Hey, what's going on,” Willie managed, coming back to himself. 

“We're going for a walk,” Kowalski said. 

“It's dark.”

“And we're ugly, and you've got a ghost wolf to scare off the bad guys. I think we'll be okay.”

Actually, Dief was lying right up next to Angie. The Vecchio women were shivering, now that he thought of it. Maybe he'd have to tell Angie about Dief, someday, before she decided she had poor blood circulation or something. Or maybe he could figure out a way to stop ghosts from bringing the cold in with them...

Shit. He was drifting off into nonsense. Yeah, okay. They'd take a walk.

“So,” Kowalski said, as the three of them started down the street. “In the old days I'd have said, hey, let's go get a beer. But you don't drink, Vecchio's not supposed to, and I'm back on the wagon. Whatcha wanna do?”

“Find Nutall and kick him in the head.”

“Hey,” Vecchio nudged him, trying not to laugh. “You'd be up on manslaughter charges. From what I hear it wouldn't take much to push him over the edge, the state he's in.”

“You did good,” Kowalski danced backward, shadow boxing. Willie found himself automatically blocking, grinning despite himself. “Is the gym still open?”

“What,” Vecchio sounded somewhat disgusted. “You mean that flea pit you call a gym? Full of sweaty wannabe boxers?”

“Hey, it's a proper gym, not one of those plasticised phoney places popping up everywhere these days.” Kowalski made a jab at Vecchio, who slapped it away, feigning irritation.

“Yeah, yeah. I get it. You're all for 'keeping it real'.”

“Well, is it?” Kowalski fell back in step between the two of them. “Open I mean?”

“Should be,” Willie rubbed his face. “Shuts at ten.”

“You still go there?”

“Yeah.” Willie rolled his shoulders. “Actually, I've got sweats in my locker.”

“Cool. Well, instead of getting yourself banged up on a murder charge, how about you beat the crap out of something?”

That sounded like a good idea. He found himself grinning at Kowalski. Actually. That sounded like greatness.  


... …

Yeah. It was doing Willie good to hit something. Ray sat back on the bench, and watched as Willie and Vecchio circled the heavy bag. Vecchio had taken off his good coat, but even so, he looked incongruous in his smart clothes, dancing back and forth, jabbing and making encouraging comments. Huh, he thought. He'd never seen Vecchio box before, not even shadow boxing. Looked like he might have been pretty good, if he'd ever gone in for it. Not that he'd have been winning medals, mind, but good enough. He could certainly look after himself, for a guy his age... For a guy their age. Shit. He was getting old.

And he was going to be getting old without Ben.

He closed his eyes, and deliberately changed his train of thought. So, Willie's guy Andrew had got back and said that the RCMP hadn't checked their ballistics yet. Which meant that tomorrow, first thing, he was going to have to phone Maggie, and tell her that the RCMP were ass-holes. Well, they knew that. Shame Buck Frobisher was retired... but hey, he could still put some pressure on where it counted. Yeah, between Maggie and Buck they could get the bastards to do their jobs. Okay...

So, if people got their heads kicked in tomorrow by the joint might of Maggie and Buck, the ballistics should take... what... a minimum of twenty four hours to come through. And then, they might get somewhere.

He opened his eyes, carried on watching Vecchio and Willie, with a smile on his face. The kid was working up a sweat, a triangle of darker grey against his sweatshirt, pointing like an arrow from between his shoulder blades to the small of his back. By the time he'd finished he'd be worn out, and stinky, and might even get some sleep. Seemed to be doing Vecchio some good as well. Angie was his niece, after all, and one thing the Vecchios took seriously was family. 

And Willie was family, and Vecchio was family, and he was family, and Ray didn't even know what that meant any more. When he was a kid, family had always been so close, and so small. Back then, he'd never have got where Vecchio was coming from. He'd never understood how some kids were scared of their Dads. His Dad was always his best friend. Right until the day he signed up for the police academy, and his father turned his back on him, for reasons he couldn't understand at the time. Slaughter house stink, the old man had said. And yeah, he had been an old man, that day. Like it killed him to see his son go down that path. It took years on the force, and his final resignation, to realise what his father had been afraid of. 

Yeah. Dad. He sighed. He'd been so scared when he first got together with Ben that he was going to lose his father all over again. And then he'd felt so... well... damned guilty about it. Because his father just blinked, looked surprised for a moment, then shrugged. “When you guys coming round for dinner then?” His Dad always had been able to surprise him.

If his parents were here, he thought, this whole thing would feel so different. It was hard to imagine it now, he'd got so used to their not being there. They'd gone on ahead of him, as parents were supposed to, after all. And he felt kinda guilty that he hadn't grieved for them as hard as he was grieving for Ben. After all, they'd gone just as sudden too. A truck, sliding on ice, jack knifing in front of them. As quick and meaningless as that. 

Five years, he thought. And it hurt like hell, but it hadn't felt... unnatural. Hadn't felt right, but it hadn't felt like it was going to kill him. You're meant to lose your parents, he thought. You're not meant to be alone.

He realised he was dozing, with his head against the wall. Vecchio had turned into a giant bird, and Willie wasn't boxing any more. He was dancing with Angie, and Vecchio had taken off and was flying round the room. 

“Jeez, I can't stay awake,” he muttered. Ben leaned up next to him, shoulder bumped him. 

“I could help you stay awake.”

Ray woke with a jerk, let out a cry. Vecchio bounced back on his toes out of range of the swinging bag, and Willie caught it, steadied it. 

“You okay, Kowalski?” Vecchio was out of breath. He was gonna have to get his clothes dry cleaned. Woulda made Ray laugh, but he was too tired.

“Yeah, yeah. Just tired. Kinda hit me, that's all.”

“I'm finished anyway,” Willie said. “Thanks, you know, for the idea.”

“Okay then, hit the showers, kid. Reckon we should head back to the Vecchio mansion anyway. Whatcha think, Ray, will your Ma still be up?”

“Ma? She'll be up all night, baking. It's her cure all. When the world sucks, make pastries.”

Ray laughed. “Like Irish mothers, and tea.”

“Your Ma was Irish? Sorry, I just kinda thought she was Polish.”

“Only by marriage. Nah, she was fuelled by tea. Tea and biscuits. Well, not what we'd call biscuits. Cookies, only they had to taste of cardboard.” McVitties, he thought, and shuddered. 

“So, you know what I mean. Ma'll be up, counting her chicks till we all come home.”

“Better get home, then.”

And Vecchio was right. They got home, and Ma was busy allocating bedrooms, deciding who was doubling up with whom, folding towels, hugging her various bambini and shooing them upstairs. It seemed the polite fiction that Willie and Angie were at the hand holding stage of their courtship had been well and truly dumped. Willie looked helpless and somewhat bemused as he was propelled by Ma to the guest room with Angie and a surfeit of pillows. Angie put an arm around him, and squeezed. Despite everything, she looked supremely Vecchio at this juncture... in other words, elegant and smug. Ray looked at Ma Vecchio, admiringly. That woman seemed to know how to make everything right. With or without pastries.

Finally, Ray found himself in bed, staring at the ceiling. Thank God he hadn't been expected to sleep head to toes with a Vecchio cousin. Light from the street outside sent a faint ripple of shadows on the ceiling. Some leaves, but mainly curtain ripples. Fluid, like waves, smudged out by his poor eyes. Charcoal. The ceiling was rippling charcoal, and outside it had started to rain. 

He was never gonna get to sleep.

He was on his knees, at the... at the...

Crime scene.

Ben was dying, and he was kneeling, and he had his hands over his chest, and there was blood everywhere and...

Ben was looking at him, and it was the last ever look. And he was speaking, and they were the last ever words, and...

“Ray.”

There was a voice behind him.

“Ray.” The voice was warm, and it was alive, and...

Ben was dead on the ground.

“Ray.”

He turned, and looked to the voice over his shoulder. There he was, as beautiful as the day he met him. A little older, a little wiser perhaps. Hair grown out enough for it to curl a little, and he hadn't shaved. Ray liked his skin rough. He knew it wasn't real, he knew this was a dream, but...

He put his hand out, touched the stubble. His hand was bloody. He flinched back in pain from the sight of Ben, with blood upon his face.

“It's all right, Ray, it's all right.”

“This isn't... this can't be right. You're dead. This can't be real.”

“Ray,” and Ben's eyes were so warm, gazing right into him, right into everything that was cold, and dark, and broken. “Ray, whoever told you that death was real?”

And then... and then...

Ray moaned in the dark, woke for a moment. Gazed up at the charcoal ripples on the ceiling, streaked by the shadow of rain. Closed his eyes. Ben's mouth was on his mouth. Oh, it was a dream, but oh, he didn't want to wake up. Nobody could make him wake up, not from this. 

Ben's lips were soft, his breath was warm, and his tongue was slipping past his teeth. Oh, God, don't let me wake. Let me dream forever.  


… ...

So, I follow them, but they don't see. None of them see. Not Willie, not either of my Rays. Not my brother, not my lover, not my son. I walk invisible, and isn't that the way it should be? Ghosts should not be seen. It can't be good for the living, to see the dead.

But, oh... I lived with the dead for so long. Before ever my father showed up. I lived with my mother's ghost, for so long, but never faced it, never faced her. Perhaps it is better for the living to know that they entertain ghosts. Not to shy away. To embrace us.

Or am I being selfish?

I sit next to him, on the bench, watching as he watches Willie and Ray dance around the bag. I remember the times we spent at this same gym. Look up at the ceiling, where they've long ago replaced the glass through which we fell. For a moment, we are falling again. He goes first, clutching his suspect, and I go straight after them, lurching out to catch him, although all calculations show how impossible that stretch is, that I can never catch him. I reach out anyway. I would sooner crash through the glass with him, then stand and watch him fall.

Glass, and gravity, and hope. I'm falling with him, and I haven't even told him how I feel. I haven't even kissed him yet.

And now I'm sitting next to him again, while his head nods, and drops briefly on his shoulder. I lean to touch him, and he wakes with a jerk, blinking. I am about to speak, when...

I am here again, and he is kneeling on the pavement, making those noises again, his hands full of my blood again, as though he's been here forever. As though he never left. As though he's never going to leave.

I have to make him leave this place.

“Ray.” He's still moaning. “Ray.” Hunched up, and pushing down on a dead thing, when I'm here. I'm right here. Right behind him... Don't look, I want to scream, don't look at that... that thing. It's not me. It's not me. I'm here. “Ray!” He turns, looks at me.

This is when I fall through the skin of the world, back into blackness, back into despair...

Only it doesn't happen, this time. He's looking at me, I'm still here.

“It's all right, Ray, it's all right.” And it's not a lie. I know it, I believe it.

“This isn't... this can't be right. You're dead. This can't be real.”

“Ray,” and this is the truest thing I ever knew, as I gaze right into him. “Ray, whoever told you that death was real?”

And then... flickering. I see shadows, hear rain slapping against a window pane, and we're on a bed together. And his mouth opens to mine, and I feel it. I feel it... warmth, a tongue, and then his hands. His hands holding me, and I have flesh, I have form, I have strength. 

And him. I have him. And he holds me, and I hold him. His hands stroking over me, as though he's moulding me out of the dark, a master sculptor, forming me from clay. Where he touches my skin I tingle into life, where his thigh pushes between mine there is heat, and then... and then...

If this is dying, I don't want to live again. If this is living, I don't ever want to die.  



	5. Try

Ray woke up with a crick in his back, and his arms aching from the heavy bag. He sat up, cautiously. His chest hurt, like a stitch every time he breathed. Oh Jeez, he couldn't have felt any worse if they had all gone for a drink last night. Cautiously he sniffed under his arms. Shit. He'd have to get a move on, hit the showers before the rest of the family woke up... Hurriedly he pulled on a dressing gown, grabbed some towels and made his way to the bathroom. When he'd got back from his undercover gig he'd been impressed with the remodelling, the fact that Ma used the insurance money to finally get the kitchen she'd always wanted, and Frannie had persuaded her to stick in an extra bathroom, and a shower en suite in the guest room. Even so, when the full might of the Vecchio clan descended, there was never enough water. So, it made sense to get your shower in early. The Vecchiettes, as Kowalski had christened the younger Vecchio girls, would take forever in there anyway. 

By the time he'd got cleaned up there was the welcome smell of coffee in the kitchen, the steam had loosened the pain in his lung, and Ma was laying the table.

“Pastries?”

She smiled, and pushed a plate at him. He sat down, gratefully. “I suppose you've been up all night?”

“Couldn't sleep.”

“I'm sorry, Ma.”

“Not your fault. These things happen. It could have been much worse.”

Ray nodded, and munched his pastry. Apricots and almond flakes. No wonder he'd been a plump kid, he thought. Come to that, no wonder Vito was still so chunky. Too much good food in this house.

“So, how are you, son?”

“I'm okay.”

“I mean, with everything. Everything happened at once. You know, this, on top of Benny.” She paused. “How's it going, your case?”

Yeah, he thought, pausing with the pastry halfway to his mouth. He put it back down on the plate, and sighed. “It's going okay. We think we know who did it. And he's from Chicago, so we might even be in the right country to catch the bastard. But Canada... well, they've got all the forensics, and they're being... well... you know what cops can be like. They don't like people trampling on their territory.”

“You'll get him,” she said, calmly. 

“I know.”

She turned, put more coffee on the stove. “When you see Benny,” she said carefully, “say hello from me.”

Ray felt a shiver run all the way up and down his spine. “When I... see Benny?”

“I'm not stupid, son,” she said. “I know things.”

“Oh.” 

“I suppose we should wake the kids up for school,” she continued, as though she hadn't just been talking about a ghost.

“Yeah... they were probably up all night giggling and throwing pillows at each other.”

“Remind me in future, no sleepovers on a school night.”

“Yeah, Ma, I'll remind you.” 

She smiled, started laying the table. “You go wake them up, I'll get their breakfasts on the table.”

He stood, obediently, then dipped his head for a kiss on her cheek. She patted his arm. “You're a good boy.”

“Ma," he laughed, exasperated, "you do know I turned forty some years back? ”

“Yes, and I'm in my seventies. I'm still your Ma, and you're still my bambino.”

Awh, Jeez. She could be so embarrassingly sweet. “Love you, Ma.”

“I know. Now, go shout the Turnbulls out of bed. You know the twins, you'll need to tip them out.”

“Yeah, yeah. You get breakfast, I get the brats. Nice to see who's got the easy job...”

She laughed, and let him go.  


... …

It had taken a long while to get to sleep, just holding each other, and breathing in the dark. Now, it was taking a long time to wake up. Angie was curled up to him, arms and legs around him, just like any other night, or morning... but she was still in her pyjamas, and he couldn't figure out if it was natural modesty, because she was under Ma's roof, or if it was something else. He heard the children running through the house, the twins shouting, Myra singing to herself, but Angie slept through it. The light gradually changed, throwing motes of dust, even through the heavy curtains, and she was painted sepia coloured by the dimness. Lightly, he kissed her forehead. Sweet Angie. His heart trembled with how weirdly normal this was. She could sleep through anything.

Gradually he heard her breath changing, as she woke up. He moved closer toward her, stroking his hands up and down her back. She shifted, settled herself along the length of his body, eased in for a kiss.

After a long moment their lips finally parted. “Hey, Angel,” he whispered. “You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah,” she breathed, and wriggled closer still. “I'm fine.” She nipped his chin, and laughed. “Hero.”

His heart flinched a little. Too soon to laugh about it. Not something to ever laugh about. He couldn't say it though, so he kissed her again, and her mouth opened up. Thank God, he thought, so grateful he was dizzy. Thank God she wasn't frightened to touch him...

“You know I love you,” she said, the words breathed up against his lips, right into his mouth.

“Yeah, yeah...” he moved his mouth next to her ear. “I heard something about that.”

“Good... I just thought I should check you knew. 'Cause...” she poked him in the chest, and he giggled with surprise, “you're kinda dumb. You miss the obvious.”

God, he thought, I do love this woman. “Come here,” he said, squeezing her tightly to him. He could feel her cheek curving in a smile, up against his neck as she buried her head on his shoulder. “I'm not that dumb.”

Her hand drifted over him, up and down his body, not as though she wanted to start anything, but as though she was reassuring herself that he was there. Checking his contours. He started to kiss her face, again, not to start anything, but simply to make sure she knew... she knew she was loved. He started to kiss under her jaw line, and she winced. He froze, and withdrew.

“Hey, don't do that,” she grumbled. “I'm not glass.”

“Did I hurt you?”

“You didn't hurt me,” she said, and her voice was getting angry. “He hurt me. You beat the crap out of him. Come back here.”

He moved back in, but he felt his body go rigid. He couldn't see it in this dim room, but...

He trailed his knuckles across her skin, from her face to her neck, and paused. He could feel the swelling, heat on her throat. His eyes were closed, but behind his lids, he could see the bruises.

He removed his hand, and rolled onto his back, to give her space.

“Hey, numbskull, did you hear me? Come back here.”

“I'm...” his voice came out a whisper. “I'm scared I might hurt you.”

Her hand came up to his face, took firm hold of him by the jaw, and turned it toward her. “Only thing that will hurt me, is if you turn away.” 

God, I'm a dick, he thought, and rolled back toward her, threw his arm across her body. “I'll never turn away.”

“Good. Because, when you touch me, it makes me better. Do you get that? Just now, when you touched the bruise, it was good. Because where you touch, it makes me better. And that's not new. It's always been like that when we touch. So, just remember this, next time you think I'm gonna break. I don't break. You got that?”

“Got it,” he smiled.

“Good.” She started wriggling, and he shifted, realising that she was wriggling out of her pyjamas. “So, you know what you gotta do now?”

“What's that,” he asked, feeling himself go hard, and wondering if he was being inappropriate.

“Here's what you gotta do...” There was a catch in her voice that sounded maybe like a laugh, maybe like something else, but before he could think about it she pressed her body up against his. He could feel her nipples, bare now, and erect, poking him through the cotton T-shirt he'd gone to sleep in. She took his hand, moved it between her legs, and squeezed it with her thighs. Her cunt was warm, and furry, and as she rocked against his palm he could feel the beginnings of damp. “Here's what you gotta do. Touch me all over.”

“Oh... okay.” And now his whole body was tingling, like it wasn't just his dick that was achingly hard. “Yeah... yeah. I can do that.”

So, he did. They did.  


... …

Vecchio was upstairs, yelling at the kids and tipping them out of bed, and Ray sat eating pastries. Yeah, Ma Vecchio was some kinda cook, he thought, but even so... breakfast tasted of paper. 

Jeez... what was that, last night? He could swear Ben had been with him... It was like they'd been touching. Not dreaming about it, not like he was fantasising, but... touching. Like where Ben touched him, he could feel himself, coming back to life, and where he touched Ben... That same smell, that taste of salty skin. The grainy texture, the delicious drag of it as their bristle connected. Friction, then the warm silk of his hair as Ray pushed his fingers into it, and hung on, opening his mouth to the velvet slide of tongue.

Ben was warm, and his muscles were moving beneath his skin, the phantom glide of his touch hardening into strength, into weight, and grip, and thrust...

Ben...

Wake the fuck up, he told himself sharply. It was a dream. A really, really good dream. It might hurt like a bastard, but you have to wake up. You can't live in a dream... 

“You all right, bambino?”

“Yeah,” Ray crossed his legs, and scooted his chair even closer to the table, hiding his lap. Not that Ma Vecchio would even look down there, but... it was damned embarrassing to be sitting with his second erection of the morning while she flapped and flustered round the kitchen. “I'm okay.” He compounded this lie with, “didn't sleep too good.” He had in fact slept like an angel... hang on, wasn't that baby? Nah, he didn't know. He'd slept good though. Just like he was in Ben's arms.

“Was the bed lumpy?” She looked concerned. “I should have turned the mattress...”

“No, no... don't do that, it wasn't that. Just, I had funny dreams, that was all.”

“It was a bad day, all round,” she said. “And you've had a bad time.”

“Yeah. I'm doing better.”

She looked at him, sympathetically. “My husband,” she said, and he noticed she was careful not to say his name, even after all these years, “he wasn't the best of husbands. But, it's funny... when he died, I missed him.” She gave a sad, lopsided gesture, not quite a shrug. “I can't say I know what you're going through, because in the end, I don't think I loved him anymore. I loved the fact I had loved him, once. But there wasn't much of that left. Your Benny though... I do know you loved him, and he loved you. And for what it's worth, I believe he loves you still.”

Awh, God. Did she have to say the worst, most beautiful thing? “Yeah,” he choked. “Yeah, I know he does.”

She patted him on the arm, stood. “How do you like your coffee?”

“Black, er, sugar.” Thank God for coffee, he thought, and closed his eyes, doubly grateful for her normalcy, and for the fact that his cock had gone back to sleep before it caused him any more embarrassment. Of course, he thought, she knows how I take my coffee. She's just chatting, bringing things out of the graveyard, back into the kitchen.

“So,” she said, in pragmatic tones, “then you and Ray, and Willie, if he ever gets out of bed, you go and find the bad guy.”

Ray laughed. “Is that your blessing?”

“No, it's a prophecy. You ever feel sure of something?”

“Yeah.” He'd been sure he'd spend the rest of his life with Ben.

She smiled. “Well, I'm sure of this.”

Just as he was about to say something else the door to the kitchen opened, and Willie came through, looking bashful, and happy and... Ray turned his head, to hide his grin. Just laid. At least the kid had the sense to wash up first. Benefits of a shower on suite, he thought, and wondered if that had been Ma's plan all along. He wouldn't put anything past her.

“Angie'll be through in a minute,” Willie said. “Sorry we're late...”

“That's okay. You're not a big fan of pastry, are you?”

“Er, no, that's fine, I'll eat pastry...”

“Sit your ass down,” Ma said, surprising Ray, not for the first time, with her earthy language. “I'll do you bacon and eggs.”

“Hey,” Ray leant across the table, poking a finger at Willie with his best 'bad ass interrogator' face. “You get bacon and eggs? No fair...”

“I'll do you some too,” Ma said, slapping butter onto the pan.

“I was joking...”

“No trouble.”

By the time Angie came through, smiling and shiny from the shower, Willie was mopping up his first breakfast, and Ray, whose appetite had finally returned, was chasing his second helping of mushrooms as they slid away from his fork.

Weird, he thought, as Angie sat down and Ma poured out juice and piled food on her plate. Damned weird... that after everything, all that shit and misery... Somehow they could wake up, and it was just an ordinary morning, in an ordinary world.  


... …

“Lambert, a word, please.” Gwen Murphy gestured him into her office, as much to spare him the immediate discomfort of walking through the squad room as to have a private word. Despite the stiffness with which he was carrying himself, she could see a tiny sag of relief in his shoulders as he stepped through the door.

“Captain,” he said, relaxing into his formal stance. And how anyone could relax into that was a mystery. Kid was wound up tight as a watch.

“Just thought I'd let you know, Nutall is sufficiently recovered from his injuries that he's been questioned. He's given a... somewhat confusing statement, but as I'm sure you could guess, there's no way he's getting out of this. Every scrap of evidence is against him.” 

Willie nodded, mutely. She looked away, briefly. “And of course, he's already lawyered up. They're trying to say you used excessive force, but I really don't think that's going to hold up.”

“If I'd used excessive force,” he said, bluntly, “he'd be dead.” 

She blinked. For a moment it hit her that he'd actually considered it. “Well,” she said, trying to get things back on track again, “you didn't.” How the hell could she make a conversation like this seem normal? Briskly she returned to the attempt. “The next thing you have to do is see the department shrink, as you know.”

“Yes, Sir, I was going to see him now.”

“Good, good. There are a mandatory number of visits that you'll have to attend before you can come back to work. And, I assume at first that things are going to be a bit... peculiar. People are going to feel odd about what happened, and not quite sure how to approach it.” She sighed. “The same thing happens when a cop's had to use his weapon... I mean, when there's been a fatality on the job. People look at the cop strangely for a while. They will get over it. So, you think you can handle that?”

Willie's mouth quirked for a moment. “People have been looking at me funny for years. Yes, Sir, I can handle it.”

“Good, good. And one final thing... I got a call from the RCMP this morning. I thought you could tell Vecchio, since I know he's looking into Corporal Fraser's murder.”

Willie stood frozen, staring at her.

“They've got a hit on some fingerprints. Perp left his marks on the bullets... turns out it's a Chicago guy...”

“Jack White,” Willie said.

“Yes,” she peered at him intently. “I see you're on it too.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“So, at some point the RCMP are going to send down an officer to liaise with Chicago PD. I know you'll be officially on sick leave, but I assume you'd like me to keep you up-to-date with developments?”

“Yes, Sir, I'd be extremely grateful.”

“Good. Well,” she sighed, “I'd better let you go. You need anything, you call me.”

“Yes, Sir.”

“And that lot,” she waved through the glass as the squad room. “They're a bunch of children. Ignore them, it will settle down.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

“Okay, better bite the bullet, then.”

Willie smiled, a rare flash. “Pitter patter, let's get at her,” he said, and left the room. She stared at his back, incredulously, as he stepped through the door. Of all the random things he could have said... 

Good grief, she thought, and pushed her glasses back up her nose. Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork... Still, she was distracted. Lambert could be a very peculiar kid at times...  


... …

Last night I lay entwined around Ray, in and through him, in an embrace I could never have imagined in life. Strange intimacy. I felt his heart beating in my chest, my lungs expanding with each breath he took, blood fizzing through his veins. Hiss, and hum, and vibration. Everything about him in motion, just as it always was. And it ran through me, rose in me, like the dark waters warming, preparing to crack the ice, when spring comes. We shook together, and when he came and cried “Ben” I felt it shudder through me. More than orgasm, more than surrender and joy. Love. Love in all its abundance, and life.

This morning he looks pale in his sleep, and his breathing is shallow. I find myself frightened... think of all the stories I have read, of succubi and incubi. Is that what I have become? Am I latched onto him because of some kind of hunger? I was always hungry for him, that is part of love after all. But is that all I am now? Appetite? An empty belly?

No. His breathing is only shallow because he is climbing out of sleep. And he has been pale for days, since my... death. I can say it now. If anything, he looks better than he has done. Peaceful. I lie beside him, and when I touch him, his face doesn't blanch at my touch. I don't bleed cold into his skin as I used to. He turns his face to my hand, and smiles in his sleep. Something has changed.

Something, but I don't know what.

He opens his eyes, and his gaze is unfocused. No... not unfocused. They are looking at the wall behind me. I let out a breath, disappointed. (And I have breath, again, or a memory of breath so strong it feels real.) To be fair, I had not quite expected him to see me. Expectation would have been too daring. But I had hoped.

He doesn't see me, but he raises a hand to his face, hovers the fingers above his cheek, where my own fingers rest on his skin. I freeze in anticipation, willing some kind of miracle, that between one blink and the next his eyes could be opened. It doesn't happen. He blinks, and blinks, and blinks at the wall. But his hand doesn't move from mine. He closes his eyes, and I realise then that he is disappointed too. I close my own eyes, and wait for the inevitable, wait to fade. Instead I feel his lips, chastely sealed together, but pressing on my mouth. A kiss. I let my hand slide to his hair, and return the kiss, but just as I feel his heart (our heart) beating faster in his chest there is a thumping from upstairs, and children yelling, and Ray jerks back, opens his eyes, and sits up.

“Shit,” he says, and rubs his face. Then, “Oh, Jesus,” and his voice sounds like something's breaking. “Ben.”

There's nothing I can do to comfort him, nothing to reassure him. I reach out to him, but there's a wall of white, a sudden horrible flurry. Snow and winter.

Winter, and voices in the wind.  


... …

“Okay, so I suppose we got a clue,” Ray said. “About damned time. I was gonna do a Kowalski and run back up to Canada, kick 'em in the head.”

Willie nodded, and tugged his ear, grinning. “From what I hear, Maggie kicked butts from here to the Arctic circle.”

“Yeah? Well, she's Benny's sister, that's for sure.” Ray shoved papers off his desk, and sank onto it. He should make some coffee, but that would involve cleaning the filter. He wasn't sure he could face that this early in the morning. “What's Kowalski doing anyway? He still in the car?”

“He was behind me on the way here. Stopped for a bit, he was on his cell to Maggie. Talking her down, from the sound of it. She was all for getting on the next plane to Chicago, coming down to get the guy who killed Fraser.”

“Is she crazy? Jeez... she's what, six months pregnant, isn't she?”

“Yeah, well, I think she thinks Chicago's cursed for the Frasers or something.”

“Huh.” Ray considered the possibility. Benny's Dad was killed by a Chicago criminal, Maggie's first husband by another... and now this? “Maybe Maggie has a point.”

“Here he comes,” Willie pointed out, redundantly, as Kowalski shoved his way through the office doors. 

“Yeah, I see that.” Ray pushed himself off the edge of his desk. “Yo, Kowalski. How's Maggie?”

“She's staying in Canada, for now, but I reckon if we don't solve this thing soon, she's gonna cause an international incident.”

Ray grinned, admiringly, then shook his head, to clear it. “Okay then... yeah, well, so what we got?”

Kowalski shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans. His eyes went distant, as though he was reading the facts off a chalkboard. “We got Jack White's fingerprints all over ballistics,” he stated. “We know he had motive, because he was tracking his girlfriend, and Fraser was defending her. But we don't know where she is, and we don't know where he is. Now, he's not very bright, so chances are he's gonna come back some place safe and familiar. So, we gotta hit up the snitches, and see what they've got. Does he have any aliases?”

“Yeah,” Willie was thoughtful. “Sometimes he's called himself 'Black' instead of 'White'. Like you said, he's not that imaginative. Once he went by 'Greene.' He's not been done under those names though, we just know he's used them as a handle. Because he was never arrested under one of them though, he could still be using colours. And he mightn't know we have anything on him. He's a small-time everything, really. Small-time bully, small-time dealer, or has been. So, I reckon we can assume he's relaxing a little, might think he's got away with it. We can check out drug haunts. That would be my best guess.”

Ray nodded. “That's all good. So, I reckon I should put on my scruffy duds, and go play the junky...”

“Hey,” Kowalski interjected. “If anyone's gonna play the junkie, it's me. For one thing, White was in and out of the 27 more than any other station, so he'd probably remember you. I only saw him a couple of times, and I don't think he saw me. In fact, I know he didn't. Cause, he would have known I wasn't Vecchio... well, you know... that I wasn't you. So they kept me away from him. He'd not know me for a cop.”

“Oh, right...” Ray felt slightly deflated. It was unlikely that White would remember him. They'd never really interacted, and it was amazingly easy to bullshit people, even people you'd arrested, into only seeing what you wanted them to see. But the fact was, Kowalski had a point. Ray had been there when White was dragged in, more than once. It was too much of a risk. Damn. He'd been looking forward to tracking down Benny's killer and getting into some real nitty gritty work. But if anyone had that right it was Kowalski. 

“And besides,” the other man continued, “of the two of us, who looks more wasted? Young Willie here won't do. I mean, no offence Willie, but you look like a priest, or a soldier or something...”

“Holy killer, cool,” Willie laughed. “Seriously though,” his voice dropped, went sad and sober. “You should see me undercover. I can get back into that world, fit right in, you know.” He glanced at his hands, started picking his fingernails, distracted. “It's too easy.”

“I know,” Kowalski dropped a sympathetic hand on the kid's shoulder. “I know. But you're a city cop. I'm not, any more. And I look like shit. I know it, you know it, even with my nice new hair cut. So, I'll go looking for my fix, and you guys watch my back.”

Ray thinned his lips. “Not sure I like it. What are you gonna do if you find the guy? You gonna kill him?”

Kowalski glared at him. “Maybe I want to. But honestly, do you think I could? What the hell would Ben have to say about it? Come to that, what does Ben have to say?”

Ray shared a dumbfounded glance with Willie, then looked back at Kowalski. He didn't know how to say it. Willie solved the problem for him, by speaking first, cautiously apologetic, as though it was his fault. 

“Actually, he's not here.”

“He's not?”

“No...”

“Is Dief here?”

“Yeah,” Ray said, staring at Dief, who's pink tongue was hanging out as he panted. “Jeez... that's weird. I've gotten so used to him, he doesn't even freak me out any more.”

“He freaks me out,” Willie said, giving the wolf the evil eye. “This morning, there I am, in the shower and...” He stopped with a stutter. “Never mind.”

Ray fixed his gaze on the unrepentant wolf, and tried not to smirk. He could swear the mutt was laughing. “Woah, sorry...” he blinked back to the conversation at hand. He shouldn't be sharing evil jokes with ghost dogs. “Sorry, Kowalski, Benny's not here. I've not seen him.”

“Me neither.” Willie frowned. 

Kowalski turned, and rubbed a hand over his face, as though he was scrubbing it with an invisible wash cloth.

“Hey... you all right?” Ray looked at the other man with concern. “How you doing?”

“I thought... I kinda hoped...”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Kowalski shook his head. “Just... if he does turn up, let me know.”

“Yeah, sure thing, we'll let you know. Right Willie?”

The younger man nodded his sympathy. 

“Okay, let's get back to it. Is there anything we missed? We're gonna try and track down this Jack Black, or White, or Pinky Purple Polka Dots, or whatever he's calling himself these days. Any other leads?”

“Well,” Willie pointed out, “we should try to find the woman Fraser was trying to defend. Helen Nulty.”

“You don't think she'd go back to him, do you?” Kowalski sounded weary. “The bastard boyfriend? I know she shouldn't, and I know she ran, but sometimes... they just give up, don't they?”

“If she went back to him,” Willie said, bleakly, “she's dead.”

“God,” Ray closed his eyes. “I hope not. Please God, don't let Benny have died for nothing.”

“I didn't die for nothing.”

This time Ray wasn't even startled. A grin broke on his face. “Benny!” And, “Fraser!” Willie cried.

Then... then Ray was startled.

“Ben.” Kowalski's voice. Ray turned, and looked at him. Looked at him, looking at Benny. Looked at Benny, looking at him.

The light in the room was wrong. The shadows flowed the wrong way. Kowalski was bleached pale as a moonlit figure on the snow. Benny was marble. And...

“Ben,” Kowalski repeated, and stepped toward him. Stepped toward him, and Benny was gone. Benny was gone, and all the shadows ran back in the right direction, and the sun was pouring through the window again.

“Shit,” Kowalski folded in on himself, like wet paper, hugged his midriff like a runner with stitch. Willie stepped toward him, to put a hand on his shoulder, but Kowalski threw up an arm in deflection. Not violently, but obviously dismissive. Like a strega making a warding gesture, banishing evil. “We need to get our asses in gear,” the man said, abruptly, as though nothing had happened. “Plan of action. Vecchio, you watch my back, and I'll hit the junkies. Willie, you go find where Helen was staying before she disappeared. You get any trouble, Dief will come and get us, won't he?”

“Sure thing.” Dief stood up on his back legs, resting his paws on Willie's chest. Willie dug his fingers into Dief's frosty white ruff, and scratched, smiling down at his constant companion. Ray shuddered. He got it, got that Willie loved Dief, Dief loved Willie... but it was always gonna give him the heeby jeebies to think of that cold touch.

“Okay. So, we all know what we're doing. Good...” For a moment Kowalski seemed to drift, staring at Willie sadly. From where he stood, what Willie was doing must look even more peculiar, staring fondly at a point four feet from the ground, fingers scooped into little hooks, teasing away at nothing. The kid had better not do that in front of strangers. 

“Hey, are you all right?” Ray knew he should keep his mouth shut, but it just blurted out. Kowalski gave him a poisonous look.

“I'm fantastic. Now, let's go find the sonuvabitch who murdered Ben, okay? And leave off the touchy feely crap.”

Ray jerked his chin, in an affirmative. Willie shrugged his jacket back on, and made his way to the door.

Yeah, they had a plan.  


... …

The place stank. Just like the one before, and the one before that. It was rank with the stink of stale beer, stale urine, and stale vomit. It managed to be dim, but over lit at the same time. Blue and pink from the neon signs washing backward through the grimy windows. Outside the neon didn't show in the noon light, but inside... it was never daytime here. No morning, noon, nor afternoon. It was always some time between midnight and three am. Closing time. But closing time was never called.

Ray picked over the sticky floor, and was grateful for his quick growing beard. This was a five o'clock shadow kinda place. He slid a cigarette out of the packet, and stared at it. Ben wouldn't like it...

Ben wasn't there. Yes, he'd dreamt him last night. Dreamt him so hard, and so perfectly that his body still tingled with it. He could still feel the jut of his jaw, where he'd traced it with his fingers. Still feel the sandpaper drag of his unshaved chin. But what use were dreams? You couldn't control them, you couldn't be sure that they were real. They could become an addiction, something he fell into as an escape from reality. From the grimness of places like this. 

Oh, Kowalski, he told himself, trying to fend off the desperation. You did see him. Vecchio and Willie saw him, and you saw him too. For a moment.

Or was it just that his yearning to see Ben caused a hallucination? After all, both Willie and Vecchio had said his name. Perhaps that flash of red, that bright vision of Ben against the snow was simply another dream. 

He closed his eyes against the neon gloom of the room, and wished he'd never heard of Ben's ghost. He'd sooner be alone than caught on this knife edge between losing him, and desperately trying to hang on. At least if he was alone he could throw himself over the edge.

Damn. He watched the pale cylinder dangle between his fingertips. With a spasm of self loathing he decided to indulge the temptation. He couldn't remember starting again... it may have been when he was giving evidence after Ben's death. He seemed to remember someone offering him a cigarette in a room with three walls, and one large window. Shadows behind the glass, like he didn't know there was an observation room behind the mirror. Jeez... he'd been a suspect there, for a while, before forensics cleared him. They'd tested him for blowback, taken his prints. What was it that prick called it? Thought he was deaf, or stupid, just because he couldn't talk right. At that juncture. Homo-cide. And after that... yeah, they let him go. 

He snorted out a bitter laugh. They let him go, and here he was now, craving smoke. He had promised himself to get rid of the filthy things the day he landed in Chicago. If he was staying with kids, he told himself, he should give up his bad habits, at least for the duration. He had gone over a decade and not touched a cigarette. How could he have fallen back into it so easily? And how hard could it be to kick the habit a second time?

Harder, apparently. This was his first cigarette since Canada, and it hit him sharply how much he wanted it. Now he had the excuse that smoking would make him fit into this dump better. He settled himself onto a barstool, hunched over the counter, and lifted the cigarette to his lips. Closed his eyes and sucked as he lit the damned thing. The smoke filled his lungs, and burned, but a good burn. He felt the nicotine hit, and spread through him giddily. It was always like this when a bad habit was new. The pleasures of smoking dimmed and blunted with time, and you were left with nothing but the craving, the cough, your sense of smell and taste diminishing. But the first few hits...

His hands were shaking. He looked at them, almost interested, spreading his fingers to observe the show. He remembered that, the shakiness, from the first time he ever smoked, behind Mrs Monroe's garage. Her husband was out, and she was drunk, and he and Michael Monroe were exchanging baseball cards, and thinking they were so grown up as they hacked and coughed, and talked about girls, and pretended they didn't want to puke.

Last time he'd seen Michael had been in a place like this. He'd been undercover with narcotics in those days. Ha, some things never changed. Michael was Micky by then, and he'd been pretty far gone. Ray took another deep drag of his cigarette, and clenched a fist. He wondered if Micky had ever got himself sorted out, ever become Michael again. Statistics, damned cop statistics, said not very likely. Micky was probably dead now.

Jeez. Poor Micky.

“What are you having?” The barkeep's voice broke in on his thoughts. Ray came too with a start, realising in the back of his head, with grim satisfaction, that this was all good. Good that he was startled to awareness, that he was shaky, good that he looked confused, out of it. 

Not good that the guy was offering him a drink, actually. Because Ray was pretty sure he shouldn't drink. He mightn't stop if he started, not the way he was feeling right now. He sucked his cigarette again, and raised one hand to his face, doing nothing to control the slight tremble.

“I'm... er... I'm not drinking. I'm here to meet someone...”

“Oh yeah? Who are you here for?”

“Jack,” Ray said. “He said he'd meet me here. You know Jack?”

“I know a lot of Jacks.”

“I mean, Black, or Brown, or... shit, I can't remember what he said.” Ray allowed a little distress to bleed into his voice. “My friend said he might have a package for me...”

“I wouldn't know about that.”

“Yeah, but you know Jack, don't you? I mean, you gotta know Jack. They said... he said he was gonna set me up...”

The bartender looked at him dubiously, and Ray started his 'druggy back pedalling' routine. “Hey, forget I said anything, I mean, I musta got it wrong, I just... he said... shit.” He stood up, deliberately too quickly, and the stool fell with a clatter behind him. “Fuck, I didn't mean... gimme a minute...” He bent down, righted the chair, dropped his cigarette, let it burn a slow hole in the carpet. When he straightened at the bar, the guy was looking a little more relaxed. Less like he thought he was being set up.

“You want Jack? Who sent you?

“Pierre,” Ray said, “La Floove, or Fluff, or something.” There were other names in the file that he could call on if this one didn't open any doors, but fortunately the barman recognised the name, even deliberately mangled.

“Oh yeah, Pierre. Okay... well, I'll arrange a meet, if that's what you want. How much do you want?”

“I want... what's he got?”

“He's not gonna carry a loada stuff on him. But he'll bring you a taste, and you sort it out with him, what you want.”

“I just... want someone who's gonna be reliable. When can he be ready? Cause I'm no good at waiting. I don't like waiting.”

The barman looked suitably contemptuous of the junky standing opposite him, shivering. “You'll have to wait. Gimme a number I can contact you on. He'll call you when he's got time.”

“I can't talk business on the phone.”

“He won't say anything compromising. Just his name, where and when. You bring the money, he'll get the stuff. You do your business, everybody's happy.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Ray took in a deep breath, and realised how much he wished it was full of smoke, and tar, and nicotine. He gripped the pen just a little bit too hard as he scrawled a number on the back of a beer coaster, made sure that the man could see his white knuckles. “Get him to call me soon,” he said.

The barkeep laughed, and his contempt was obvious now. “Yeah, I know. You don't like to wait. Sure you don't want a drink?”

Shit... Ray paused at the bar for a long moment. Nearly too long. He shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, I wanna save my money.”

“Well, if you change your mind, you know where we are.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.” He wasn't going to change his mind. He might have fallen pretty far, but there were some bad habits he just couldn't afford to take up again. If there was the slightest hope that Ben was... that he might... If there was any chance that he might see Ben again, he wasn't going to do it drunk. Even so, he bit his tongue as he left the bar, and blinked against the odd dazzle of day. It felt strange that the light could be so bright out here, while just behind him was a little corner of shade that would never see the sun.

For a moment he felt a violent urge to take a wrecking ball to the dump, smash it to pieces. As though it was some filthy part of himself he wanted razed to the ground. Stop it, Kowalski, he told himself, angrily, and kept on walking. He was shaken. More shaken than he could explain, by his dream, by the flash vision of Ben. But he had to hold himself together, if only for a little longer. Until they'd caught Ben's murderer. 

Keep walking, he told himself. Vecchio, he knew, would be waiting for him... and now he had something to tell him. Something positive.

He wondered how Willie was doing.  


... …

It should have been easy to track down Helen's mother, but she had remarried, changed her name, and left the state. After more digging than he would have thought necessary he finally found her new address, and unlisted phone number. 

“I haven't heard from my daughter in years,” the woman said, frostily. “I'm sure I have no idea what she does with her life.”

“Mrs Cooper,” Willie said, trying to sound as authoritative as possible, “we have reason to believe that your daughter is in some danger. If there is anything you can think of that might help us. Family members, names of friends...”

“I would thank you not to get the family involved in Helen's messes. As to 'friends,' the only friend she has left is that boyfriend of hers. Try him.”

Poor Helen, Willie thought, remembering the last time she had appeared at the station, face swollen with tears and the aftermath of fists. She had seemed defeated, unwilling to say anything... perhaps aware of the low regard in which she was held by a majority of the station. It was as though they saw her as somehow responsible for, or complicit in her own abuse. 'Women like that,' one of the civilian aides said, 'make it harder for the rest of us to be taken seriously.' And this was one of the more sympathetic members of the station. 'How stupid do you have to be to put up with that kinda shit,' one of the other rookies said. 'She probably likes it,' smirked another, nudging Willie as though sharing a joke. Willie was never as glad of his Spock persona as he was then. If he hadn't had his armour on, he'd have punched the guy.

Such opinions notwithstanding, the woman was not stupid. She obviously picked up on the atmosphere. No wonder she was reluctant to ask for help. Every time Willie looked at her, he saw his mother, or his sister.

On Helen's last visit Willie had managed to get to her first, to steer her gently to an interview room, and secure her some fruit juice and chocolate. 'You won't like the coffee here,' he'd said, trying to Ma Vecchio her, to put her at ease with reassuring nonsense and nourishment. 'You could use it to strip wallpaper though.' She had sat with her head dropped, staring at her lap, and though she smiled wearily at his weak joke, she shook her head, and shook her head. She looked like a wilted tulip, stalk bending beneath the weight of its blossom, her skull too heavy for her neck.

It was not long after that visit to the 27th Precinct that she miscarried her baby. How had Vecchio put it? 'He beat the baby out of her.'

As if all of that wasn't bad enough, the poor woman was despised and rejected by her own mother. He felt his lips tighten and his shoulders tense.

“Mrs Cooper,” he said, responding to the woman's cold tone with his own frost. For all she knew he was fifty, with weight and attitude behind him. “Her 'boyfriend' as you call him has attempted to murder her.”

“Oh, they say that,” the woman continued, contemptuous. “They fight, and make up. She's brought this whole thing on herself.

God help me, Willie thought, closing his eyes. “Whatever you may think about your daughter's choices, her life is in danger. Mr White's violence has escalated recently. A police officer who was defending your daughter has been murdered, and...”

“I'm very sorry about the police officer, but I have no desire to get involved in my daughter's life.”

Very carefully, very quietly, Willie persisted. Something had to get through to this hateful woman. “The last thing we know for certain, before your daughter disappeared, is that her so-called 'boyfriend' beat her severely, and she miscarried your grandchild.”

There was a long silence on the phone, then a thin thread of a sigh. “If there was anything I could do to help, believe me, I'd do it. But I haven't spoken to my daughter in years, and have no idea where she, or her boyfriend, might be. Thank you, officer.”

Willie stared at the receiver in his hand as the phone went dead, then cursed. With a mother like that, it was no wonder poor Helen looked for affection, in the wrong places.

Well, he thought, forcing calm upon himself. All was not yet lost. The mother had said 'don't get the family involved.' Which meant there must be family somewhere... if he could track it down. He leaned back in Vecchio's office chair and rolled his head on his neck. Family... family... was there anyone who had ever shown up for Helen? Met her at the hospital, picked her up from the station?

Hmm. Willie sat up, scratched the back of his head. There had been a cousin, once... He thought there had been a cousin.

He scooped the phone up, abruptly, and dialled the station. Okay, so he was supposed to be on sick leave, but Bo Wu had always been decent. They'd been partnered up a few times, and he was fairly sure he could trust him. For a moment his skin crawled, as he remembered that not all cop partners were trustworthy. Nah, he told himself firmly. He hadn't known that Nutall was as bad as he was, but he'd never trusted him. He trusted Bo. Not sure the guy had ever bought the Spock act, and he even laughed at some of Willie's more obscure jokes, while the rest of the station just scratched their heads and wondered how they were being played. He'd ask Bo for help. He was pretty sure he'd get it.  


... …

Kowalski slumped in the passenger seat, staring out the window, looking as dejected as he had at the funeral. Ray kept flicking anxious glances at him from the corner of his eye. He hadn't really registered it, but there had been a little glimmer of light in Kowalski, yesterday. The man had rallied himself, pulled himself together to help Willie and Angie. He had seemed more like his natural self, and it just seemed... right. Like the world hadn't turned upside down. So Ray, like a jackass, had almost forgotten how much he must still be hurting. Dammit. Some kind of a friend he was... to both Benny and Kowalski.

He had it easy... well, easier than Kowalski at any rate. He'd had proper conversations with Benny since the funeral. It was almost as though he hadn't quite lost him. He might not ever sit with him again in a greasy spoon café, pretending not to notice that his friend snaffled his french fries when he thought nobody was looking... and who would have thought Benny could be such a devious thief? But he did have the comfort of knowing that Benny was still present. Still a friend.

Kowalski... what had Kowalski had? Some bizarre flash of winter, for the space of a blink. What the hell was that about?

“You all right, Ray?” Stupid, stupid question, he thought, as he drove. But he couldn't think what else to say.

Kowalski made a noise in his throat, which, after a second or so Ray translated as a laugh. “I must be in a bad way. You called me by my name.”

“Would you prefer Kowalski?” Ray tried to make a joke of it. “Or Stan?”

“Fuck you,” the other man said, with no malice. 

“I just... you seem worse today, you know?”

“Yeah, well. Some bastard shot my boyfriend. That kinda puts a cramp on your style.”

Ray's throat clenched. It felt like he had a lump of dried bread lodged in there. The words were out before he could stop them. “Don't take it out on me. I didn't shoot him.” 

Kowalski sighed. “Sorry. Just... that place, you know? It's just like any other... I dunno, 'spit-pit' I've ever been in.”

“'Spit-pit'?”

“'Spit-pit,' 'piss-pit,' I dunno. They probably don't bother going to the men's room, just stand up and whizz in the corner. And... it's so fucking sleazy. It's... Ben's better than that, you know? He deserves better than to be killed by some small time pusher from that... that kinda midden.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“It's like... his Dad was killed because he was investigating some big conspiracy. Ben was killed because he stood in front of a junky with a gun.”

“He was saving a life,” Ray said, loyally. “You can be proud of that.”

“I wish he'd saved his own life first,” Kowalski said, bitterly.

“Then he wouldn't have been our Benny.”

Kowalski nodded, still with his face turned away, looking out of the window. “I can still wish it though. Yeah, I'm a shit. But I wish she was dead, and he wasn't. He'd hate me for that. I hate myself, but... You know, maybe that's why I can't see him.”

“You saw him today.”

“Yeah? Maybe. Like sheet lightning. You can't talk to lightning.”

“Give it time, Kowalski. Benny'll find a way to talk to you. Like Willie said, I'm sure of it.”

Kowalski let out another little noise, a 'not laugh', then quietly talked to the window, as though to, or through, his reflection. “I thought last night that he was... but he can't have been there. It wasn't like... he talks to you and Willie. He doesn't talk to me. I kinda... I mean, I dreamt him, and he was talking in my dream. But then it was... like I was awake. But...” His voice stopped, and he rested his head against the glass. “I'm talking shit.” He bounced his head briefly off the pane, wrapped his hands around the back of his skull. “He doesn't talk to me.”

There was nothing he could think of to say. The only... fair thing to do was to keep silent. 

Damn, Benny, Ray thought, fiercely, if you're out there, then for God's sake, get your phantom ass over here and talk to Kowalski, before the poor bastard cracks up. 

No answer.

Ray stared at the road ahead, and kept driving.  


... …

My Ray is throwing up barriers again. Different barriers. Shock is giving way to something worse than despair. Resignation. It's heaping up in grey drifts, cold and deadening. Dirty snow. Chicago snow. Soot. He could bury himself in it if I don't get through in time.

I walk alongside him. When I touch him I feel everything, the little hairs on the back of his hands, the leathery knuckles. Sometimes he opens his hand, as though reaching out to take my own. Whether he does it consciously or not, I don't know, but I rest my palm against his, twine my fingers through his. Sometimes, he closes his hand in the slightest hook, and when I look down, we are walking hand in hand. I feel the callouses on his palm, from hard practical labour, yet he seems not to notice me. His hand curves to mine, knows my touch. His flesh remembers me, even if he can't feel me, but his face is made of wood. He breathes in grey smoke, lets the cold bleed in, through every pore.

All around me the world continues. Breakfast, and he crosses his legs under the table, hunches over his plate while Sophia Vecchio makes coffee. Then the kitchen crowds, and I can even smell the bacon, the fried mushrooms. Can feel the warmth of the whole room.

Then we are walking together, and he pauses on the side walk, phone hooked between his ear and his shoulder, talking to Maggie and I feel like such a... I haven't even seen my sister. But I can't, I can't, I'm tracking him. Then, he, Willie and Ray are talking, planning to solve my murder. And this is something important, I understand that. To the living it is important to have justice. To have some measure of revenge. It was so important to me, once. But I can't bring myself to care about what they have to say about the case. I am consumed with my Ray. Last night, we touched each other, and he carved me back, out of less than air. Out of nothing but memory, mine and his. Our touch. I feel myself, body and form and strength again. Yet here he is today, walking like his own shadow. 

All day long, wherever he treads, I follow. Haunted and haunting. I have to bring him back to life, but how can a dead man bring anyone back to life?

I only know that I must try.  



	6. Stained Glass

Willie came running up the steps to the station, studiously ignoring the reactions of his colleagues. He was aware that he was out of 'character,' wearing the leather jacket Angie got him for Christmas, jeans blanched pale by long use, nearly bald at the knees. He wasn't particularly bothered how he looked. His face was as schooled as ever, and he let the covert glances slide off him, remembering a tapestry on his grandmother's living room wall. “Be like a duck. Stay calm and unruffled on the surface, paddle like the devil underneath.” Waterproof, he thought. I'm a duck, his mind added, and he nearly laughed. 

 

That would have blown his entire persona. He bit the tip of his tongue, and calmed down. He'd done a reasonable job of persuading the psych that he wasn't about to follow in his mother's footsteps. It wouldn't do for him to crack up laughing for no reason in front of the entire station house.

 

Okay... okay. He was here for a reason.

 

Clara was on shift today as the Civilian Aide. Okay, so Willie wasn't a civilian, but Clara was okay. He stood in front of the desk, leant over, bracing himself lightly against the surface with the three central fingers of his right hand.

 

“Hi, Clara,” he smiled. He could always relax a little around her. She was a plump, motherly woman. He liked her.

 

“Willie,” she smiled up at him, genuinely, and his heart eased a little bit. “I heard what happened,” she glanced at his hand. “I'm so sorry...”

 

“I... yeah, I know. Look... I'm...” Shit. He followed her gaze, saw his hand, and realised the knuckles were scraped. How had that happened? He remembered kicking, he remembered throttling... when had he thumped...?

 

Oh. That's right. In the hospital. He'd thumped the wall, bashed his knuckles. And boxing, last night at the gym, he'd opened up the cuts again. Fraser would probably tell him to clean it out with disinfectant...

 

He was staring. She was staring. He'd forgotten how to talk.

 

In panic he retreated back behind Spock, straightened, his fingertips lifting from the surface of her desk, his whole body going into parade rest as he folded his hands behind his back. He could see it in her face, as his mask went down. She looked almost... hurt. He couldn't help it. He hadn't realised that sympathy would be worse than people ignoring him, pretending not to notice him when he was standing right there.

 

He cleared his throat. “Thank you, Clara,” he said, trying to soften the formalism in his voice, and failing abysmally. “Angie's fine. I'll tell her you were asking.”

 

“Yeah, you do that, honey,” the woman smiled again, her flecked eyes sad. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

 

Willie could see the opening for a joke here, some cheerful back and forth ('what, I need a reason to visit, you think I only come see you when I want something?') He didn't have the energy.

 

“Is Bo around? He phoned me up saying he'd found some info I was after... couldn't get away from his paperwork, he said, so I thought I'd save him some trouble, pick it up myself.

 

“Yeah, Bo's in the canteen,” she said. “He went through with some files, he's probably trying to get some work done while he pretends to take a lunch break.”

 

Willie nodded. That sounded like Bo. Diligent, and hungry. “Thanks, Clara,” he said, then managed to look at her without flinching. “And... thanks.”

 

She nodded, and he turned, briskly, before he could embarrass either one of them any further.

 

There were six people in the canteen... no, seven. David from accounting was sitting in a corner, scowling at a laptop. As he entered the room everyone went silent. David looked up, then looked back at his work, blinking hard, having obviously lost his train of thought. Bo was nowhere to be seen. Willie felt the old sense of disconnect. What had the captain said to him earlier? Schoolchildren... ignore them. Yeah, right. His mouth nearly curved into a bitter smile at the familiarity of the situation: 'hey, that's Lambert, did you hear about his Mom?' 'Hey, that's Lambert, did you hear about his step Dad...' But he didn't let anything show. Not with his game face on. 

 

Willie turned to leave the stone cold room, feeling as though a silent crowd were glaring at his shoulders, rather than a meagre handful of his colleagues, trying not to meet his gaze. At that moment Bo emerged through the other door, carrying a tray. He must have been digging around in the fridge out back.

 

“Hey, Willie!” The other man's voice was unexpectedly cheerful. “You, er... wanna cup of coffee?”

 

“Yeah,” Willie said, though what he really wanted was the semblance of normality. Bo smiled, just as he would any other day, and dumped the tray.

 

“Gimme a sec, and... er... here you go.” He pulled out a file from under his arm. “I got this for you. I was gonna try and fax it to Vecchio's office, but the machine's down. Tried emailing it, but it kept bouncing back at me.” Bo shook his head. “I think it's something to do with firewalls, or attachments, but you know I don't understand that shit.”

 

“Who does?” Willie knew enough about it, but he also knew it annoyed people when they thought he was too clever. He had decided a while back to affect a minor incompetence with technology, since it seemed to put his colleagues at their ease. 

 

Bo laughed, his smooth face crinkling in a smile. “Coffee coming right up.”

 

With a sense of relief Willie pulled up a seat at Bo's table, and started leafing through the file. 

 

Yeah. There was a cousin. Samantha Walker. But seemed like she moved around a lot. That was a lot of addresses she'd given over the years...

 

Bo sat back down opposite him, pushed a coffee over the table. Absently, Willie took a sip. It was vile as tar, and utterly ordinary. Willie sat back and sighed. Around him the other diners were talking again. He tweaked his lips in a smile. “Thanks, Bo.”

 

“Any time, buddy,” the man replied. They both knew they weren't talking about the coffee.

 

“So, this Samantha, we have any idea what her current address is?”

 

“Well,” Bo smoothed his hand over his prematurely thinning hair, in a gesture that reminded Willie strangely of Vecchio. If Vecchio was Cantonese, slightly plump, and twenty some years younger. “She moved since she was last in here. I thought at first it should be easy enough to find her, but she left no forwarding address. But we did catch a break. Even though she never said what her job was, that was easy to find. She works up at the university library. Same job for the last eight years. Reckon they'd know.”

 

“Do we know why she didn't leave a forwarding address?”

 

“I reckon,” Bo leaned forward, plucked his soggy tuna sandwich from the paper plate, and tore off a corner, “well, I don't know for sure, but it's possible she's actually avoiding this 'Jack White' guy. You know, the bad boyfriend.”

 

“Why the fuck...” Willie caught himself, and folded his arms across his chest, waited for the sudden silence to fill up again with gossip and chatter. Okay, so now they'd all be gossiping about his unprecedented use of the Anglo-Saxon vernacular... Good Lord, he was thinking in Fraser's voice now. Get a grip, Lambert. Damn. When he felt more in control of himself he started again. “If she was having trouble with him, why didn't she tell anyone?”

 

“I don't think she particularly trusts the police,” Bo said, despondently. “Can't say I blame her, after all that's happened with her cousin. But I've talked to her landlord... seems she really cares for Helen. When she moved, she's bound to have told her where she went.”

 

“But not us.” Willie clenched his fist, cracking his knuckles. “Well, actually...” he sighed. “Now that I think of it, why would she?”

 

“Yeah. She's never been in trouble with the law.”

 

“Okay, thanks Bo. I'll go scout out the university.”

 

“Yeah. Good luck, Willie. Let me know how it goes.”

 

Willie stood, quirked the tiniest flinch of a grin. “Will do. Thanks, Bo.”  


... …

 

“Are you absolutely sure you're a policeman?” The aged librarian was giving Willie the once over, looking like every clichéd librarian Ray had ever imagined, rolled up into one silver bunned, bespectacled, cardigan wearing dragon. She musta been around when Noah built the arc.

 

“Yeah, lady,” he snapped, on Willie's behalf. “He's a cop. What, you don't think black guys get to be cops?”

 

“Young man,” the lady snapped back, and Ray let out a reflexive bark of a laugh. Nobody called him 'young man' these days, except for Ma, once in a blue moon. “Young man, I am not in the least bit bothered by your companion's pigmentation. I am somewhat confused by his attire.”

 

Willie sighed. “Here,” he held out his wallet, again. “Here's my badge, there's my ID card, photo, all the rest of it. Phone the station house, give them the number, and have them confirm it.”

 

The librarian raised a steel grey eyebrow. “These things can easily be faked,” she said, sternly.

 

“That's why he's asking you to confirm it,” Ray gritted out. 'You stupid old bat,' he added in his head. 

 

Dubiously the woman took Willie's wallet. She started riffling through a Rolodex for the CPD's phone number.

 

“Phone number's on the card,” Ray pointed out, impatiently. 

 

“I'm not blind, young man. I can clearly see that there's a phone number on the card,” the old woman gave him a cold stare. “I want to make sure I'm phoning the right one.”

 

“You're not a very trusting person, are you,” Ray informed her, trying to give her the evil eye. He must be slipping in his old age, or she had superpowers. She didn't even blink.

 

Willie smiled. “You'd make a great cop,” he said, trying to soothe things down. Ray shook his head. Kid must have the patience of a saint, 'cause if Noah's wife here didn't get a move on, he'd pull her hair out by the bun, old lady or not. Still... Willie's comment seemed to have the desired effect. The battleaxe smiled, briefly. She raised her finger, sharply, and for some weird reason both he and Willie stilled. 

 

“Yes, I'd like to speak to the Captain please. Yes. I'm aware that the Captain is busy. No, I do not want to speak to an officer. I want to speak to the Captain.”

 

Holy Mother of... who did this librarian think she was? The Director of the FBI? A civilian couldn't just ring a police station and demand to speak to the Captain... not just to confirm the ID of a cop. 

 

“Young lady, I am perfectly aware of...”

 

Willie leant across the desk, obviously recognising the tinny voice on the other side of the line. (Did the kid have bat ears or something?) “Hey, is that you, Clara?”

 

“Excuse me,” the librarian spoke to the phone, then glared at Willie fiercely, made a shush gesture. Willie stood back, grinning sheepishly. “Yes,” she continued into the phone. “Yes, I am phoning with regard to Officer Lambert...” She nodded, put her hand over the receiver. Almost conspiratorial now, she whispered, “they're putting me through to your Captain as we speak.” She made shooing gestures, and Ray turned his back on her, trying not to grin. Damn. Okay, so she was probably his great, great, great grandmother, or the zombie ghost of every nun who had ever put him over her knee, but he liked her.

 

“Come on, Willie,” he said, in Italian, deliberately trying to wind her up. It drove people mad when they knew they were being talked about, but didn't understand the language. “Let her talk to your captain. She knows you're a cop by now, she's just got to justify her time and effort.”

 

“She's just being careful, uncle” Willie replied. For some reason he only ever called Ray 'uncle' when they spoke Italian, a hangover from his first cautiously stilted lessons. The rest of the time he was Vecchio, the name by which Willie had first known him. “I wish more people took security seriously.”

 

“Well, I'm glad they don't. It makes my job easier.”

 

“What is your job?” The old lady had finished her conversation, and was looking at them brightly. “I'm sorry, my Italian is less than perfect. You're right, I do know that your nephew is a policeman now. But I'm less than certain of your role in this, Mr... What did you say your name was? Vecchio?”

 

Ray did his level best not to let his jaw hit his chest. A slow, begrudging smile crept across his features instead. The old biddy spoke Italian. With an atrocious accent, but hey, who was he to judge? Her grammar was probably better than his.

 

“I'm a private detective,” he said, returning to English. “Willie and me, we're working on a case.”

 

“I see that.” She plucked her glasses from her nose, and started to wipe them. Less a matter of need, Ray thought, than for something to do with her hands. Suddenly she looked a lot less like a frost queen, and much more like somebody's grandma. “I did have to be careful though,” she said, sliding the glasses back on. “You understand, anyone can come in saying anything, and I wanted to make sure my girl was safe.”

 

“Your girl...” Ray's heart tripped over itself with a sudden flurry of hard thumps, one after the other.

 

“Yes,” she stood, straightened her back, with an audible click. “Samantha brought her cousin here a couple of days ago and well... it was obvious the girl was in trouble. Some man...” Her face puckered in disapproval at the thought of the 'man.' “I don't know a lot about him,” she said, “but I know enough.”

 

“Yeah, he's a nasty piece of work.”

 

“So I understand. Helen...” she paused, let out a fleeting smile. “Well, Helen needs help. I've been trying to persuade her for a while now...”

 

“You know where Helen is?”

 

“Of course I know where Helen is.” The old woman clacked her tongue loudly. “You promise you can protect her? That you'll get this... 'White'?”

 

“Yes, Ma'am,” Willie's voice was vibrant with relief. “Yes, we'll protect her.”

 

“Good. Well, I'll just take off early today,” she laughed, and started walking at a surprising pace. “Had to happen once in fifty years. Follow me.”

 

“Is it far?” Ray asked, falling into step alongside her. “Because we could always send a patrol car in the meantime to keep her safe...”

 

“I live on campus,” the old woman said. “Helen's been staying with me, as my granddaughter.”

 

Ray felt his heart warm. “What's your name?”

 

“Rose,” she said. “Rose Casey.”

 

“Well, Rose Casey,” he said, feeling magnanimous with relief, “if you were ten years younger, I'd marry you.”

 

She had more than ten years on him, and knew that he knew it. Her face twinkled though at the blatant flattery, and she laughed, bumped his arm with her fist. “Maybe if you were twenty years older, I'd take you up on the offer.”

 

Willie looked suitably disgusted. “I can't take that man anywhere,” he confided to Dief. His faithful shadow wagged his tail and nudged up against his leg.  


... …

 

Ray was sitting in the car, with the seat pushed all the way back, staring at the roof. He'd had some trouble persuading Willie and Vecchio to leave him alone, but he'd managed it, finally. “Just gimme a moment. Well, twenty. Gimme a chance to get my head together.” They'd bought it, reluctantly, so here he was in the car, alone.

 

So, if he was alone, how come he didn't feel it? All day he'd been feeling a... sort of vibration in his chest. As though his heart was a string, and someone was plucking it. Heart string. Harp string. He wondered what note it would play.

 

Shit. He was still dreaming. His brain was just spitting out crap. He shut his eyes, relaxed his head on the car seat, let out his breath. He'd done everything he could think of, and until he heard from White he couldn't do any more. And he couldn't stop... couldn't stop thinking about last night. And that flashbulb moment of brilliance, Ben in the snow.

 

“Okay,” he spoke aloud. “I don't know if you can hear me. Maybe I'm just cracking up. But Ben, if you're there... please.” His eyes were hot, and his Adam's apple hurt. What was that story Ben told him one time, about how the blackbird went black? Little bird flew to the sun to pluck a fire apple, brought it back down to bring its sweetheart back to life. That's why girl blackbirds are brown, it was the boy blackbird who burned himself for love.

 

Or maybe it was the other way round. He didn't know blackbirds from ostriches. He laughed, and swallowed, painfully. Yeah, his throat hurt. He'd swallowed a piece of burning coal. “Remember the blackbird, Ben? And that damned poem you taught Willie? Golden apples. If I could...” He fisted his knuckles into his eyes. “If I could bring you that damned apple...”

 

“Ray,” came Ben's voice. Warm honey. “I don't need an apple. I just need you.”

 

Oh, God. Ray's eyes opened, wide, and...

 

Ben was there. Right there... and he was smiling. Leaning over him, and...

 

The phone rang.

 

Shit.

 

The phone rang, and kept ringing, and Ben wasn't there. Ray slammed his head against the back rest, and screamed. Screamed, sucked in a deep breath. Pulled himself together. Damn, damn, damn... Steadied himself, and answered the phone.

 

It was White.  


... …

 

Rose could see it on Helen's face, painful and bright as stained glass on a sunny day. Betrayed. The poor girl felt betrayed.

 

“You said I'd be safe here.”

 

“Sweetheart,” Rose sat, carefully. “You are safe. I said I'd look after you. Well, these gentlemen will look after you. You didn't tell me exactly what happened, but I know you're in fear of your life. They're the police. The police can protect you.”

 

Mutely the younger woman shook her head. “No,” she whispered. “No, they can't.”

 

“We can,” Willie went down on one knee, looking for a moment like he was genuflecting, or about to propose. He took Helen's hand between his two, and squeezed. Helen didn't flinch, and Rose felt relief ease into her, like warmth into arthritic joints. Helen knew and trusted this young police man. Well, it was a start. “I promise, Helen, we'll look after you.”

 

Helen kept shaking her head, and tears shuddered at the corner of her eyes. “You can't. He couldn't, the Mountie. Fraser couldn't. He was always... there. I was so sure. That he'd... fix it. Make everything right. But...” Now she was crying for real. “Jack shot him,” she said. “It should have been me. Because, because I asked for help, Constable Fraser is dead. I might as well have killed him myself.”

 

Oh, good heavens, Rose realised. Helen was talking about that Mountie who was killed recently... some kind of hero, if her recollections were correct. He'd been quite a fixture around Chicago... when was it? Ten years ago? Fifteen? Years blurred together, at her age. Poor girl... she'd witnessed that? White had shot the man down in front of her? No wonder she'd been afraid to leave her room.

 

“I shouldn't even have come back,” Helen sobbed. “What if he found Samantha? What if... what if he found Rose?”

 

“Hey, don't do that to yourself, Helen,” Willie said, gently. “We've got you now. And you didn't kill him. Look... I know we've let you down. Cops, I mean. You should never have felt that bad, that there was nobody in Chicago you could trust. I'm sorry we made you feel like you had to go to Canada for help.”

 

Helen hung her head, and her hair swung around her face, a veil of strawberry blonde. Willie looked helplessly at Vecchio, who rubbed his hand over his bald head. With a sigh the older man sat on the couch, a discreet distance from Helen. 

 

“Listen, Helen,” he said. “Willie's right. We let you down. I'm sorry. But you don't gotta worry that White's coming after you. We got a lead on the bastard, and we're gonna get him.”

 

“How can you keep me safe till then? Because,” and her voice was suddenly firm. “I'm not going to the police station.”

 

Vecchio nodded. “My Ma was the same,” he said, with a voice like he'd swallowed sand. “She was lucky, she had family. And sons grow up. When I got big enough, the old man let up. And nobody ever hit her again.”

 

Helen darted a glance up through her hair. Rose's hands twitched to pat someone, soothe them better, but she couldn't figure out if she wanted to comfort Helen, or Vecchio, who looked like he should be in a confessional, or Willie, who was staring at his zio, looking shocked and sick.

 

In the end she petted Helen, who broke into raggedy weeping. When the sobs had passed, Vecchio continued. “I promise, nobody's gonna hurt you at my place. Me and Willie, we'll take you to my Ma. Let her look after you, okay? You've been Rose's granddaughter. You can be my cousin over from Italy, okay? And us Vecchios look after our family.”

 

Incongruously, Helen laughed. “I don't even look Italian.”

 

“No, you look red Irish. But hey, I've got a brother who looks punk Polish, so that's okay. We're mixed mutts, us Vecchios.”

 

Rose smiled. She liked this man. She really liked this man.

 

“I'll come with you,” she reassured Helen, “if you want me to help you settle in. Would that be all right, Mr Vecchio?”

 

“Ray,” he said. “And yeah, the more the merrier.”

 

“Okay,” Helen breathed. “Okay, I'll come. And I'll... when you get Jack, I'll tell people what he did to Constable Fraser.”

 

“Corporal,” Willie corrected her absently, and squeezed her hand before standing, helping her to her feet. “And he'd be proud of you.”

 

Helen didn't look as though she believed that, but at least she was on her feet. And that, thought Rose, was a start.  


... …

 

It was cramped in the car on the way back. When Ray said that Rose could come too he'd forgotten to work out how they'd get so many people in the damned car. Well... it wasn't impossible, it was just that Helen took one look at Kowalski, and for a minute there she nearly backed out on them. Not that it was Kowalski's fault, but he was looking pretty damned scary. Scowling at the dashboard, hands clenched, like he wanted to pound something with his fists. Now wasn't the time to ask him, but Ray was gonna have to take him to one side, find out what the hell had happened while he and Willie had been away.

 

In the end Helen was persuaded to sit between Willie and Kowalski. “I don't bite,” Kowalski said, and managed one of his more tragically little boy smiles. He was kinda vulnerable looking when he didn't have laser beams coming out of his eyes, and thank fuck Helen got it then that he wasn't a bad guy. Even so, when she scrunched in next to him, she shivered, looking pretty beaten down and pathetic. Not the way people said 'pathetic' nowadays, more the way Ma meant it when she said something was 'patetico.' Just, really, really sad. Almost as sad as Kowalski, when you got past the fractured forcefield thing he had going on. 

 

Helen kept shivering. Even though he didn't think it would do a lot of good he pulled off his coat and draped it over her. Problem was, Dief was lying across her lap, doing his protective Arctic wolf thing. And he'd brought the Arctic weather with him.

 

Rose sat on the passenger side, next to him, nothing daunted, and tugged her collar up to her ears. Despite the cold she seemed cheerful enough. “Onward,” she declared in her school matronly way. Ray bit back a chuckle as she pointed toward the horizon like a general about to lead the charge into battle.

 

“Mush,” he joined in, “yeehaw...” He caught Kowalski's grim expression in the rear-view mirror, and Helen's mute panic. Awh, shit. He started the car, pulled out backward. Somehow, despite Rose's valiant optimism, and the fact that they were finally solving this thing, he didn't feel much like joking any more.  


... …

 

Willie ignored the thundering footsteps of children running in and out, and stepped up behind Angie's chair, dipping his head. 

 

“Hey, Angel.”

 

She arched her neck backward, and pressed her lips against his, so that their kiss was upside down.

 

“Spiderman,” she smiled against his face, and laughed. 

 

“Don't,” he groaned. It had been a long time since he thought that movie was cool. Though he didn't mind being Peter Parker, so long as Angie wasn't Mary Jane. He much preferred Gwen Stacy and the new guy.

 

“How you doing there,” she asked, more solemnly.

 

“Hey, I'm fine.” He slid into a chair next to her, took her hand. “How are you?”

 

She rolled her eyes. “I'm gonna have to sex you up ten times a day till you've decided to stop worrying about me.” One corner of her mouth twitched up in a grin, and she licked her lower lip. “Or is that the plan?”

 

Willie laughed, kissed her knuckles. “You're wicked.”

 

“Well,” she pulled a smug face. “I try my best.”

 

“Listen,” he said regretfully, “you know I gotta go now. Talk to my Captain, figure out what to do next...”

 

“Yeah, I get that.” She stroked his cheek, gazing warmly into his eyes. “Go get your man. We'll all keep an eye on Helen for you.”

 

“I know you will.”

 

“We're the Italian Witness Protection Service.”

 

“And you do it better than the FBI.”

 

“I'll get that put on a T-shirt for you. What do you think? 'The CPD do it better than the FBI.'”

 

Willie grinned. “That would look great down the Precinct.”

 

“Start your own fashion trend.”

 

Willie stood, still grinning, and pulled out his cellphone. He was gonna have to find some corner of this house that was quiet but...

 

He poked his tongue out at her as he stepped through the back door, out into the garden.  


... ...

 

Helen was sitting at the kitchen table with Ma Vecchio, Angie and Rose, drinking coffee, resisting the pastry offensive, and waiting for her cousin to arrive. Ray was on the sofa, hands hanging between his knees, watching Helen through the open door.

 

That was the woman Ben died for. God. Ray closed his eyes, and slumped backward, let his head topple against the cushions. He was dizzy. For a moment he was staring through his eyelids, through each floor and ceiling layered above him, falling right up into the endless sky. 

 

“How you doing, Kowalski?”

 

Ray opened his eyes, tried to focus them. Damn... he'd not worn his glasses in days. Where the hell had he put them? He hadn't left them in Canada, had he? And if people didn't stop asking him how he was doing, he was either gonna punch someone in the face, or start crying and never stop.

 

“Look, did something happen?”

 

“Yeah.” For a moment he thought of telling Vecchio about seeing Ben in the car, but... shit, that wasn't his to tell. At least he knew now that Ben was really there, reaching out to him. Briefly his face flickered toward a smile. 

 

“Well, go on then. Spill.”

 

Or maybe (and his heart went cold) he should tell Vecchio that he hated that woman in the kitchen, that she was the cause of his Ben's death and he wanted... he wanted...

 

No. He didn't hate her. Just, every time he saw her, it hurt.

 

Fuck... what was he thinking? He sat up straight, with a jerk. 

 

“White phoned.”

 

“Jesus, Kowalski, when were you gonna spring that one on me?”

 

Ray glared. He was pissed with himself for taking this long to spit it out, but he wasn't gonna let Vecchio know that. “Well, I couldn't exactly tell you with Helen in the car, could I?”

 

“No, she was pretty near cracking.” Vecchio was giving him that cautious look, like he could see how near Ray himself was to cracking like an egg.

 

“Well, she's in good hands now.”

 

“She is,” Vecchio slouched, uncharacteristically, leaning against the wall. “So, when's the meet? Where you gotta be?”

 

“Church,” Ray scowled. “Can you believe the fucker wants to do the deal in a church? He's been watching too many gangster movies.”

 

“Don't tell me he wants to make the deal in a confessional?”

 

“Yeah. Probably thinks it makes him seem cool.”

 

“Holy shit,” Vecchio snorted.

 

“Hey,” Ray forced himself to pretend he was okay. “That's what a drug dealer would sell in a church, 'holy shit.'”

 

Vecchio stared at him like he'd just grown an extra head. “That's gotta be the lamest joke I've ever heard.”

 

Ray spread a smirk on his face. “I got hundreds of 'em. You want some more?”

 

“Fuck no. Don't think my baby ulcer could stand it.”

 

Ray stared at Vecchio, a little too long. He'd kept missing it... Shit. “You don't really got an ulcer, do you?”

 

“Nah,” Vecchio said, flapping his hand in a calming gesture. “Well, I mean, I've had one. Just gotta be careful what I eat. And keep my stress levels down.” He looked wry. “Like that's ever gonna work.”

 

“Yeah... well... look after yourself.” Ray looked at his knees, feeling uncomfortably close to crying again, as he had done, on and off, all day. Vecchio gently rapped him on the shoulder with his fist.

 

“Hey, don't get all mushy on me. Come on, let's go get the bastard.”

 

“Yeah.” Ray lurched to his feet. It was so damned hard to move. “I need to tell Willie about the meet. He's getting his Captain on the phone.”  


... …

 

“Okay, hold your positions.” Gwen Murphy spoke into the walkie-talkie, holding her own position, eyes fixed firmly on the door of the church. “Our men are inside. Listen for my word.” She had come out for this one herself, and so many people had volunteered to do their bit that she couldn't take them all. It would have been like a St Patrick's Day parade if every cop who wanted to had turned up on the street. Half of the Precinct remembered Corporal Fraser, and everyone else had heard of him.

 

When the RCMP representative finally got here, Gwen wanted White trussed up, neatly packaged, and ready to hand over on a silver platter. Partly to avenge the Corporal, of course, and partly to show the Canadians how they should have done the job in the first place. She felt her lips thin. It made her furious to think of how the RCMP had treated Benton Fraser, all through his career, and even after his death. He was a good man. He had deserved better.

 

“Guy was a legend, right?” Officer Bo Wu spoke before he could stop himself, shooting an apologetic glance immediately afterward. She flicked her eyes toward him, and decided not to bark.

 

“Yeah,” she said. Bo was okay. She should partner him up with Willie, now that she thought of it. In fact, that's she should have done that more often in the first place. They worked well together, and she had the feeling they actually liked each other. “Yes, Benton Fraser was a great man.” And, she thought, but didn't say, 'once upon a time, he saved Willie's life.' 

 

Bo nodded, focussing on the church. His normally pleasant face looked grim.

 

Yes, she thought, appraisingly. Bo was okay.  


... …

 

Kowalski was right, of course. That guy White was as dumb as they came. It was a stupid idea for the man to try to broker his 'business' deal in a church. Only one main way in, and no way he had the key to the presbytery, if he even knew where, or (come to that) what it was. 

 

Even so, Willie's Captain had men around the back, just in case.

 

Ray's hands were steady on the gun, thumb resting on the safety, ready to flick it off the minute the bastard showed his face. He hadn't had to draw his weapon in... how long now? A long time, he realised, though it would never be long enough. 

 

Willie nodded to him, from the shadow of a pillar. Ray touched his nose with his thumb. Kowalski was already in the confessional, on the penitent's side, just as White had suggested. He didn't know yet, for sure, but if White had kept to his side of the so-called 'plan' he would be on the priest's side of the screen. Jeez, what an idiot. He musta actually looked for this church... there weren't that many round here that even had that type of confessional any more. Last time Ray went to confession the priest looked about Willie's age. He was a smiley kid, took Ray to the back room with him, turned his chair slightly away, shut his eyes, and covered his face with his hand. He was trying to be modern, or ecumenical, or something. The idea, presumably, was that Ray could confess without being too embarrassed by having the guy look at him in the face, while not being put off by the ritual. Which was a shame, because without the ritual it didn't make him feel any better. Just didn't work when you could see the confessor flinch at your confession. Some of the things that bothered Ray were old as Vegas, bitter as the bullet in Benny's back.

 

Oh, Jesus. Ray fumbled in his head for words, cast up a prayer. Please. Please let us get this bastard.

 

Yeah. One thing Ray had learned in Vegas, toward the end. God listened to your prayers, even when you cursed His name. 

 

He had come home, after all.  


... …

 

Felt like a coffin, Ray thought, kneeling. He had never had liked confessionals. Last time he'd been in one, he'd been what... twelve? He'd yelled at the priest, he remembered that, and called him a dirty old man. 'Do you touch yourself?' Fuck, he hadn't thought about that in years. Mom had said the guy hadn't meant anything by it, he had to ask those questions. Maybe in those days she was right. Nobody would get away with asking a thing like nowadays. Back then, though... What did Ray know? But Dad had gone white, stormed to the church, and nearly got himself excommunicated. Neither he or Dad had ever gone back.

 

See? It'll be okay, Ray, he told himself. You're your father's son.

 

“'Kick 'em in the head,'” he whispered. Got that from his Mum as well...

 

His nerves broke in laughter. Crap, he actually sounded like a junky. He squeezed his hands, as though he really was praying. Hold it together, Kowalski. Just a few more minutes.

 

On the other side of the grid a shadow moved. 

 

Okay, okay... don't kill him yet. Don't even know who he is yet. Wouldn't do to kill a priest, after all, with Chicago's finest outside. The CPD would never live that one down.

 

“Bless me Father, for I have sinned,” he muttered, as arranged.

 

“How long is it since your last confession?”

 

Ray's mouth was dry as he gave the agreed upon response. “It was before I last scored.”

 

The silhouette moved again. “Stan Smith?”

 

Time stretched around him, and stopped. For a long moment there wasn't a thought, wasn't a word, not a single syllable in his head.

 

Then the world crashed back in. Ray swallowed, feeling sick, and stood. The gun was in his hand, and he pointed it to the screen, and...

 

No. No. Ben was all about Justice. All about the Law. If Ray shot this man like the dog he was, then he'd be killing Ben. He'd be killing that part of himself which he loved most in Ben. Where Ben lived still. 

 

He drew in a shaky breath. The gun still had its uses. Deliberately he rolled the chamber, letting the click echo in the little cubicle. Making sure the bastard heard.

 

“Jack White,” he said, calmly. “This is a citizen's arrest. I am arresting you for the murder of Corporal Benton Fraser, for the attempted...”

 

“Fuck,” the guy said, lurched to the door. Ray slammed open the door on his own side, barrelled after him.

 

White hadn't got far. He was flat on his face already, hands folded behind his head, and Willie was kneeling on him, one leg pressed into the small of his back, expertly frisking him for weapons. Vecchio was standing over him, gun pointed directly at his head. 

 

Ray stepped right up to him, pressed the muzzle of the gun hard against the guy's skull, only dimly registering that neither Willie nor Vecchio tried to stop him. White was sobbing into the cold stone floor. Yeah. It figured that the woman-beating murdering bastard was a coward.

 

Breathe.

 

With a disgusted snort he stepped back, planted himself just out of range of the guy's feet (though he looked too terrified to kick) keeping his gun at the ready. Willie smiled, with angry eyes, as he removed a gun from White's belt, and several packs of powder from his pockets. Then he grabbed his arms, yanked them behind his back, and cuffed him.

 

Ray stared.

 

In his imagination, he had killed this guy a dozen different ways, even though he'd known, deep down, that he would never do it. Not in cold blood. And in his imagination he had always had some pithy comment thrown in for good measure. Some way of letting the fucker know how much contempt he was held in. Some way of letting him know just what a hole he had torn in the world when he killed Ben.

 

None of it seemed real now. Ray had seen one too many dead bodies, bleeding out on the concrete. And there was nothing he could say that would make any damned difference at all. Jack White would never know what he had done. Would never care. Yet Ben would have died to save even him, the scum of the earth, if the man had been in any danger.

 

The world was never going to make sense again.

 

Ray just stood, gun in his right hand, wrist steadied by his left, for the few brief moments it took for the cops to turn up, mirandize White, and drag him away.  


... …

 

In the end, the arrest of Jack White was embarrassingly easy. Willie hadn't been sure what he was going to feel, when it was all over, but he hadn't expected to feel... insulted. There was something about the way Fraser had been killed that rubbed salt into the wound. That Fraser had been gunned down by an idiot like Jack White, so randomly... it seemed even more of a waste somehow.

 

He remembered Vecchio's words. 'Don't let Benny have died for nothing.'

 

Willie sank into a pew, and stared blankly at the altar. He knew well that any death felt like a waste, and there never was enough time. Fraser had saved Helen, and if he had his time over, he would do it again.

 

“Willie?”

 

He turned his head. Fraser was sitting there, next to him, with a smile. A sad smile somehow.

 

“I suppose now we've done it,” Willie asked, heavily, “you'll be going?”

 

“No,” Fraser kept his patient gaze upon him. “No. I'm not going, yet.”

 

“So, I might see you around still?”

 

“I'd have thought so, Son.”

 

“Thanks,” Willie's voice was choked. 

 

“No. Thank you.” A ghostly hand patted his back, a chilly waft. “And... I've been talking to Dief. He'd like to stay.” Fraser looked down at his wolf, with exasperated affection. “I think he's been missing Chicago. He'll probably make you sniff things and eat a lot of donuts for him.”

 

Willie laughed, wiped his face. “So long as he helps me sniff out some criminals.”

 

“I'm sure that will be part of his remit.”

 

What about Kowalski, Willie thought. “Hey, Fraser, I think you need to talk to...”

 

Fraser was gone. Willie leant forward, buried his face in his hands.

 

“Hey, Willie.” Bo's voice broke in on his thoughts. “You praying?”

 

“Something like that.”

 

“Sorry, I'll come back...”

 

“No, no. I'm done.” Willie stood, and turned to Bo. Forced a smile. 

 

“You did good,” Bo said, with a real smile. Looked proud of him, even. “Come on. Let me get you a drink.”

 

“I don't drink.” 

 

“Coffee then.” Bo clapped his hand on Willie's back. “I'm buying.”

 

Willie took a deep breath. He had to leave the church some time.

 

“Okay.”  



	7. Flowers in the Snow

They're all bleeding. My brother, my son, my lover. I don't know who to be with, who to go to, though my heart has its own desires. But the choice is taken from me, and I sit where, right now, it seems I need to be. I am sitting beside Willie.

The sun is pouring through the window with unexpected brightness. The stained glass paints itself upon his skin in rich hues. Blues, and reds, and golds. He doesn't seem to see it. The living do not know how beautiful they are.

“Willie,” I say, and he turns. 

He turns, and he's a child again, sullen, sitting across the table from us in interview room three. This is so long ago. Before Ray became 'o zi, his uncle Vecchio. My friend is leaning over, playing 'bad cop' to Willie's street punk. Tells Willie that he has no mother. I know that Ray has regretted those words ever since. Willie, at the time, did not correct him.

Willie, at the time, expected everybody to leave him. As did I, when I was a boy myself. And Willie, as a man, is before me again, trying so hard to be anything other than a lonely little boy, who just lost his father.

“I suppose," he says, and we're back in his present, "now we've done it, you'll be going?”

Oh, Willie. 

“No,” I say. “No. I'm not going yet.”

And we sit, and talk a while, and he even laughs. And then...

He's gone. The church is gone. And I'm swimming through diluvian forests, in a ship that sinks through glacial depths, tectonically slow, beneath the weight of its softly piling snow. I part the waters with my hands, peering through the murk, looking for my beloved. Looking Ray, so we can breathe together again, at least once, before drowning.

Right or left, up or down... I don't know where to turn. I don't know where to be.  


... …

Kowalski was asleep on the couch, his forearm folded over his eyes, Ma's best throw tucked around him. Ray nodded. Let the guy sleep.

“So,” Ma said, as he returned to the kitchen.

“So.” Ray stared into his coffee, inhaling its steam, and smiled. “You were right, Ma. We got our man.”

“I said you would. You should know, at your age, to listen to your mother.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know, I know. You're always right.”

“I am.” She patted him on the shoulder. “How are you in yourself, son?”

Ray leant his chin on his fist, and thought about it. “It's... strange. It's kinda like, you know when we were in that motor home, that horrible holiday we had, when it wouldn't stop raining?”

She flipped a dishcloth at him. “That was decades ago,” she pointed out. “You'll have to forgive me sometime. It wasn't much of a holiday, but it was all we could afford.”

Yeah... Pa had been going through a mean streak, and Ma took them all away in the middle of the night saying, 'let's have an adventure.' 

“I don't mean it like that, Ma.” He never did mean it like that... never did want to hurt her feelings. Even when she pretended she was joking, he could always see through her. “Not like that, Ma. What I mean is … You remember when the rain stopped? And for three days we'd had nothing but that banging on the roof and the walls. And me and Frannie pretended we were in a spaceship, and we were being hit by meteors.”

Ma sat opposite him, and smiled. “I remember. And Maria sulked, because she wanted to play with you, but she thought she was too old, and got pissy instead.”

“Yeah,” Ray laughed, remembering. “And Paulie...” He stopped. He couldn't think about his little brother.

“Yeah.” He cleared his thoughts. How was he gonna say this? “Well, when the rain finished, the quiet was... well, it was the loudest thing I ever heard. It was like it got inside my head, and there was nothing I could fill it with. And I was... well...” He'd never admitted it before, even to himself. “I was scared.”

“Oh, son.” Ma put her hand across the table, rested it on his. “I'm sorry.”

“Nah... don't be. It's like, now that everything's over, and White's been locked up, and Helen's gonna testify, and the RCMP guy finally turned up... you know, the whole shebang. Now that it's over, it's really... quiet.”

“Are you saying you're scared?”

Ray looked at her anxious face. “No,” he said, slowly, realising it was true. “No... because I know this feeling. Not as bad as this, but... when you come down from something. A job. A storm.” (Vegas, he thought.) “You think it's the end of the world. It's not. Things go back to a new kinda normal.”

She nodded, still listening.

“And that holiday, it was okay, in the end. Because when we did get out of the caravan, the sky was so... So blue. Bluest thing I've ever seen.” 

He looked up, over her shoulder. Smiled. There was Benny, standing by the kitchen window, smiling back. Blue eyes. Glad. Behind him, in the garden, Willie was throwing a ball with Vito, and Angie was sitting on the swing next to Frannie, with Myra on her knee. The two women were braiding the little girl's hair.

Benny followed his gaze. “La famiglia è la patria del cuore,” he said, gently.

“Yeah,” Ray agreed. “Family is the home of the heart.”

Ma leant across the table, kissed his cheek.  


... …

Ray's dreaming.

“I took this bus, I drove this car, I got on this train, I walked down this street, I opened this door, and...”

Ben.

Ray opens his eyes, stares up. And he's awake now, wide awake. And it's real. Ben's real. Kneeling by the couch, in jeans and his old white T-shirt, right next to him. Barefooted. Smelling of clean sweat, and neatsfoot oil, and wet grass.

“Ben,” he whispers, and it's like someone rolled a rock off his chest. He can breathe again. “Ben,” he says, and lifts his arms.

Ben leans down to him, gathers himself around him, holds him in a hug. He's warm, his heart is beating. Ray can feel his breath against his hair, his square fingers and big hands stroking, tracing the line of his neck from nape to hair.

That moment, that sheer moment of joy, of giddy relief, when the pain stops hurting, when the nightmare ends, when your parents put the light on, and there are no monsters under the bed. Tears, but happy tears.

Ray sits up on the couch, draws Ben to him, and holds on tight in that embrace.  


... ...

It's like drawing in breath when you thought you'd never breathe again. Finally...

We move back from the kiss, and breathe. And oh, that smile. That beautiful smile, which I thought, which I so feared to never see again. That smile I'd thought died with me. He's smiling at me, and I know that I'm his mirror, that he is mine. I know that he sees that radiance returned to him as he reflects it back to me.

Ray. My own, sweet Ray.

“Ben,” he whispers. “I thought... I thought I'd never see you again.”

“I told you that I'd never leave you.”

“Yeah. Yeah... you did.” He blinks, and a shining bead of light rolls down his cheek. He's incandescent with life. He shines. I touch his tear, lift the wetness on my fingertip. Kiss salt. His hand reaches out, and reverently he touches my face. “I thought...” his voice is a murmur, “I thought it was my fault. When I couldn't see you, I thought it was my fault. That I didn't love you enough... that...”

How can he think that? For so many years I yearned for a haven, but never had it, despite the beauty of my homeland, so desolate and cold. Yet, when Ray was there with me, everywhere his foot fell, there were flowers in the snow.

“Oh, Ray, nobody could have loved me as much as you.” 

And here, now... The whole world is with me. Sitting next to me, on this couch. I could go... we could go, anywhere. We will go everywhere. But now... All the world is here. We lean together again, fold into each other. Embrace. 

“I love you, Ray,” I tell him, and it's so obvious and right. He smiles, pressed up against me, puts his hand upon my thigh. 

He's shining with it, everything about him haloed and bright. I didn't have to go into the light. He was my light all along. When the time comes, we'll go together. 

“I love you...”

“I know you do,” he says, and kisses the words against my cheek. “And I you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note 1: 'zio' is Italian for 'uncle.'
> 
> AN 2: When I was writing Post Mortem, I sent a related poem to Ride_Forever, from Fraser's pov. The poem mentioned "flowers in the snow". Ride then sent back a haiku piece that she was working on from Kowalski's pov, on the same theme, with practically the same line. When we stopped freaking out, we decided that upon completion of the haiku sequence and of posting for the Big Bang, these two poems would be posted as a "duet".
> 
> Here's the link... http://archiveofourown.org/works/531314


End file.
